‘I started crying like a child’

It happened at 1:14 a.m., and Christian Lafontaine didn’t understand.

“There was a first vibration,” he said, “and I looked at my wife and asked, ‘Did you feel that? It felt like an earthquake?’ She had. By the time she answered, we were shaken a second time, it took maybe five seconds. It was much more violent the second time.”

He glanced over at his brother Gaétan, whose wife had gone to the bathroom. Gaétan’s eyes darted toward the back of the bar. He was going to get her. “He would have never left without her. If he had left, he would have gone nuts,” Christian said.

Christian told his own wife it was time to get out. They started walking. Marie-Noëlle was standing alone near the bar’s front door. “She looked at my wife with terror on her face, she just couldn’t comprehend what was happening,” Christian said. “The two of them were best friends. Melanie told her, ‘We don’t know what is going on, but we’re getting out.’ That’s when the power failed.”

The entire bar went pitch black, then turned orange – “brighter than the middle of the day, a blinding, lively orange,” Christian said. The tall buildings around the Musi-Café were reflecting the light through the big windows that lined the front of the bar.

The lead wagons of the train had blown past the level crossing. The five locomotives at the front navigated a sharp bend behind the bar – despite going 10 times the speed limit, they stayed on the tracks. Following the last locomotive, an empty buffer car flew off. One oil wagon after another derailed. Momentum pushed the pileup three storeys high, the twisted wreck of steel carrying more than seven million litres of oil. Inside the bar, someone yelled, “Fire.”

“We saved ourselves and the wave of flames washed over the Musi-Café. Some tried to leave from the front and couldn’t, others tried to exit by the back and that was a sea of flames.”

Only 15 seconds had gone by since the first rumblings.

“I was just afraid I’d get separated from my wife in a panic,” Christian said. “She just wanted to hide, everyone wanted to hide.” There was no screaming, but with the orange light coming through the windows, many people mistakenly thought the area in front of the bar was dangerous. Christian’s wife wanted to move to the back and take cover, but he pulled her out the front door.

“That was the last time I saw any of them,” he said of other patrons. Had he waited 15 more seconds, he would have died.

Outside, Christian saw his car parked across the road, and a wave of fire as wide as the street coming toward them. “Asphalt doesn’t burn, buildings do,” he said. “When I saw the fire coming down the street I knew it was oil. I just started running, racing south.”

Yvon Ricard saw chaos, the train flying past the terrace and exploding. “A big mushroom cloud went up – I couldn’t believe it,” the musician said. Stunned, he stood with his mouth open, trying to make sense of things. Soon, the heat of burning oil jolted him to action and, along with four other people, he took off.

“We were running around houses and through backyards,” Yvon said. “We demolished a fence. We eventually got to the lake. We stopped running when we couldn’t feel the heat on our backs.” Turning, he saw a scene of devastation. “The entire town was on fire to my right. It was hallucinating; wires were falling, transformers were exploding.”

Running around the back of the train, as unexploded rail cars were slowly pulled by gravity towards the inferno, Yvon went searching for his family. He found them standing on the porch outside his in-laws’ home. His wife’s gaze was fixed on the flames downtown, her hands pulling at her hair as she screamed in horror.

“She knew that it hit the Musi-Café, she was certain we were dead. When she saw me, she jumped into my arms,” Yvon said. His musical partner’s wife was also standing on the porch, preparing her teenagers to evacuate. She waited all night for news about her husband, Guy Bolduc. Dawn arrived – no news came.

René Simard was disoriented as he began running from the Musi-Café. He stumbled on the steps and fell. Frédéric Fortin turned back and picked up his friend, pulling him onto the town’s main street. “The heat, the smell, the noise was so loud, like a tearing sound,” René said, describing the rolling-pin-like motion of the burning oil as it flowed down the street. “It was like big waves coming to get you. They rolled, the sound beating. Then, explosions everywhere.”

As René sprinted towards his new Mini Cooper, the car exploded. He had parked on the south side of the bar, away from the rail line. At that point, he knew his friends inside were dead. With Frédéric, he ran away from the fire and didn’t stop until he reached a bridge spanning the Chaudière River several blocks to the south. Standing under a massive lighted cross erected on a hill overlooking Lac-Mégantic, the art teacher watched as his adopted town burned.

Luc and Julie had jumped over the side of the terrace and run toward the lake. Luc ducked between two tall brick buildings and dashed through a narrow passageway between houses. By the time he got down to Mégantic Lake, the long park along the water was already burning. Oil had started spilling into the placid water. He looked back down an alley to see four blocks of downtown burning.

He and Julie were separated. She ran north towards her home, crossing land that moments later would be on fire. Luc headed south towards the Chaudière. Standing near the Eau-Berge Hotel, he called his mother and left a message on her answering machine: “When you turn on the TV tomorrow morning you’ll see that downtown Mégantic is burning. I’m safe, I’m alive.”

Inside the Eau-Berge, engineer Thomas Harding was awakened by the explosions. He pulled on his clothes and bolted for the door. A waitress, standing on the terrace as consecutive blasts shook the hotel, saw Mr. Harding’s first reaction as he spotted the wagons: His eyes widened and colour drained from his face. He headed towards the flames, helping first responders pull wagons from the fire before they could rupture.

As they ran away from the Musi-Café, Christian Lafontaine’s wife fought his grip – she wanted to go back and get her purse from the car. “Forget the money,” he yelled. Behind them, fuel tanks began exploding as buildings crackled in heat growing more intense by the moment.

“I got into the car and turned towards the Musi-Café. I saw the wagons blocking the road. I couldn’t pass. There was a wall of fire hundreds of feet high. My kids were screaming and crying. I turned the car around. Then I started crying like a child.”

His wife, Melanie, stopped to remove her high heels. Christian caught a breath and saw the flames, several storeys high, rapidly approaching. He tugged her arm again and she ran barefoot. The two reached the south end of town without a singed hair. They were ready to cross the bridge, fearing downtown would turn to ash.

“We saved ourselves and the wave of flames washed over the Musi-Café,” he said. “Some tried to leave from the front and couldn’t, others tried to exit by the back and that was a sea of flames.” The Quebec coroner’s office told the families of victims that moments after the initial exodus, the rapidly expanding fire began to consume all the oxygen in the bar. The doors and windows soon imploded. Anyone left inside was asphyxiated.

Gaétan’s body was found near his wife Joanie at the back of the bar. “They were together, they found each other,” Christian said. “That makes me feel better.”

Moments before the train derailed, Yannick Gagné’s pregnant wife arrived home. Lisandra Arencibia went to the couch and soon fell asleep.

“I started closing the windows,” Yannick said. “While I was looking towards downtown the ground shook, the electricity cut out and a fireball turned the sky orange. I thought a meteor had hit.” He dashed outside to see what was going on. Other people were running. They said wagons were exploding and everyone should leave town.

The proud owner of the Musi-Café felt a double pull of responsibility, personal and professional. He told his wife and kids they had to go. He took out his phone to call the restaurant, but it was already ringing.

“One of my employees was calling,” he said. “She was screaming, telling me that she was running away, that everything was on fire, it was chaos, the restaurant was gone, everything was gone, and people were still inside. I told her to calm down, that I’d go see.

“I got into the car and turned towards the Musi-Café. I saw the wagons blocking the road. I couldn’t pass. There was a wall of fire hundreds of feet high. My kids were screaming and crying. I turned the car around. Then I started crying like a child.”