LAC-MÉGANTIC, QUE.—The woman was working the night shift in Lac-Mégantic’s hospital. Her husband, a taxi driver, was cruising the downtown strip for late-night fares.

Together they were witness to two opposing sides of the tragedy that have shattered this lakeside town of 6,000 people.

From two kilometres away, the train explosion that has likely killed dozens of people sounded like a vicious clap of thunder, a huge “boom.”

“It was at that moment that we all went running outside to see what had happened, and it was at that moment we saw the explosions that occurred downtown,” said the woman, who asked that her name not be published.

She immediately thought of her husband.

“I called him to see what had happened, to see if he was okay ... When he picked up all I could hear was screaming: ‘We have to save them, we have to save them.’” Then the line went dead.

About 20 minutes later, the panic was already spreading through the town’s hospital, which went into Code Orange in anticipation that it would be soon bombarded with the casualties of the train derailment and violent explosions. The woman tried again and reached her husband. On this call there was more time for explanation.

“He said there was nothing left to do,” the woman recounted.

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The heat and the danger along Lac-Mégantic’s Rue Frontenac, the main strip, had forced the frantic taxi driver out of the epicentre of the disaster and left his best friend, wife and two children, aged 3 and 8, to fend for themselves.

“He told me it was like a river of fire because the oil had spilled out of the wagons.”

Back at the hospital, reinforcements from neighbouring medical centres were standing by, ready to rush to Lac-Mégantic to treat what they expected would be dozens of injured residents. Hospital authorities were also ready to evacuate all their patients in case the wind shifted and blew the black, toxic smoke in their direction.

But then nothing happened. The wind blew the smoke in the opposite direction and no patients with any of the serious burns and other injuries that might have been expected arrived at the emergency room.

Bernard Théberge received second-degree burns on his right arm while fleeing from the patio of the downtown Musi-Café, where many are thought to have died, but he said he hadn’t seen any other burn victims when he went to the hospital Saturday.

One Red Cross volunteer who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media put it bluntly: “You have to understand: there are no wounded. They’re all dead.”

That absence of injured is one of the most haunting signals to have emerged from the train explosion, which police says has left five people confirmed dead and about 40 people unaccounted for nearly two full days after the first blast.

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The Quebec coroner’s office said that the five corpses they have hauled out of the wrecked downtown core have not been positively identified and have been taken to Montreal for forensic testing that may include DNA examination and other methods. Spokesperson Genevieve Gaudrault said the intensity of the initial blast and the flaming wagons that were still burning well into Sunday suggests that some victims may have simply been vapourized.

Lac-Mégantic’s hospital has now taken in dozens of suddenly homeless seniors from several downtown residences who are not able to stay at their homes. They are in the rooms and in the halls. They are being placed anywhere that can be spared.

They will likely be there so long as fire crews battle the remaining blaze, police comb through the wreckage in their criminal investigation and search crews look for signs of life, or confirmation of additional death, in the wreckage.