The death toll in Quebec’s oil train disaster jumped to 13 people last night and police said about 37 more people were missing, a sign the derailment and explosion could be the worst accident in Canada since the Swissair crash of 1998.
Police said they estimated a total of about 50 people were either dead or missing after the gigantic blast destroyed dozens of buildings in the centre of Lac-Megantic early on Saturday.
Previously they had said five people were dead and 40 were missing. Given the massive devastation in the town center after the blast, few residents expect any of the missing to be found alive.
If the death toll does hit 50, that would make it Canada’s deadliest accident since 229 people died in 1998 when a Swissair jet crashed into the sea off eastern Canada.
Asked when authorities would declare the missing people dead, police spokesman Benoit Richard replied: “When we find the bodies.”
The runaway oil tanker train derailed in the small town of Lac-Megantic shortly after 1am on Saturday, causing a huge explosion and deadly ball of flame.
Air brakes that would have prevented the disaster failed because they were powered by an engine that was shut down by firefighters as they dealt with a fire shortly before the calamity occurred, the head of the railway that operated the train said yesterday.
The train had been parked at a siding on a slope near the town of Nantes, which is 12km (eight miles) west of Lac-Megantic. The volunteer Nantes fire service was called out late on Friday night to deal with an engine fire on one of the train’s locomotives.
Switched off
Nantes fire chief Patrick Lambert told Reuters the crew had switched off the engine as they extinguished a "good-sized" blaze in the engine, probably caused by a fuel or oil line break in the engine.
The problem was that the engine had been left on by the train’s engineer to maintain pressure in the air brakes, Ed Burkhardt, chairman of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway (MMA), said in an interview. As the pressure gradually “leaked off” the air brakes failed and the train began to slide downhill, he said.
The fire service said it contacted a local MMA dispatcher in Farnham, Quebec, after the blaze was out. “We told them what we did and how we did it,” Mr Lambert said.
Asked whether there had been any discussion about the brakes, he replied: “There was no discussion of the brakes at that time. We were there for the train fire. As for the inspection of the train after the fact, that was up to them.”
It was not immediately clear what the MMA dispatcher did after speaking with the fire service. Mr Burkhardt said the fire service should have also tried to contact the train’s operator, who was staying at a nearby hotel.
“If the engine was shut off, someone should have made a report to the local railroad about that,” he said.
The center of Lac-Megantic, a lakeside town of 6,000 near the border with Maine, was still cordoned off yesterday morning. One of the destroyed buildings was a music bar popular with young people, and witnesses reported fleeing the area around the building as the heat and flames closed in.
Canadian crash investigators said they will look at the two sets of brakes on the train, the airbrakes and the handbrakes. – (Reuters)