More information and eyewitness accounts with commentary below the fold.



The disaster took place just after 1 a.m. when runaway oil tank cars decoupled from locomotives hauling a total of 72 cars. The loose tankers with brakes smoking roared into Lac-Megantic, a lakeside town of about 6,000 in the province of Quebec. A witness estimated the tanker cars were traveling 75 miles per hour.

Four of the cars blew up in a fireball that mushroomed many hundreds of feet into the air. Each tanker carried 30,000 gallons of North Dakota crude oil.

Officials are now reporting over 24 hours later that the locomotive caught fire before the train ran away. Firefighters from Nates, an adjacent community, were dispatched to a locomotive blaze on the same train a few hours before the derailment. AP



Ghost Train photo credit: Nancy Cameron

Burning crude that had spilled into the storm sewers and erupted through manholes, setting buildings on fire, the head of the rail company that ran the train told Reuters.

Local firefighters were overwhelmed as the blast ruptured a water main, creating a shortage of water. Volunteer firefighters kept up a constant stream of lake water to cool freight cars into early Sunday morning to prevent further explosions.



The train exploded 30 feet from the Musi-Café bar

An eyewitness account from The Globe and Mail

Bernard Théberge, 44, a cook who lives on the outskirts of Lac-Mégantic, was out with his friends at the Musi-Café, one of the most popular hangouts in town and the last known whereabouts of many of the missing. The Musi-Café is a few metres from where the tracks cross Frontenac Street, Lac-Mégantic’s main street. Mr. Théberge was on the outside patio in front of the café smoking a cigarette when the derailment happened. He heard the train coming and knew right away that something was wrong. “It was going way too fast,” said Mr. Théberge. "I saw a wall of fire go up. People got up on the outside patio. I grabbed my bike, which was just on the railing of the terrasse. I started pedaling and then I stopped and turned around. I saw that there were all those people inside and I knew right away that it would be impossible for them to get out. Mr. Théberge said he tried to go around front to help people escape “but there was just fire everywhere.” "I just pedaled away, but I know a lot of people didn’t make it out. There were maybe 60 people inside. “This is a first. Smoking saved my life,” he said with a voice raspy from the heat and smoke. His right arm was bandaged for the second-degree burns.

“The train went by at 75 miles an hour, it was going like a crazy train,” said resident Gilles Fluet, who had just called it a night and left the popular Musi-Café shortly after 1 a.m. Saturday with his two friends when he saw the freight train barrelling down the tracks that cut through town. “The wheels were smoking, because the brakes were overheating. I said to my friends, ‘Run, because that’s not going to make the turn. It’s going to crash.’ We could see they were all tankers carrying oil.”

"Officials said they had few reports of injured victims, suggesting that people caught up in the blast either died on the spot or managed to escape. One woman told Radio-Canada that she had been unable to contact around 15 of her friends.' Reuters

At a tent at the corner of Frontenac and Lemieux streets in the afternoon, paramedics sat idly in the torrid heat with no one to help. Residents gathered to await news of survivors, which never came.

"He claims he set the brakes on all five of the engines. He also claims he set the brakes on a sufficient number of cars on the train," he told Reuters in an interview.

In 2011, Montreal, Maine and Atlantic had a train accident rate of 10 accidents per million train miles throughout the company’s network, compared with a rate of 3.7 at Pan Am and a national average of 2.8 accidents per million train miles.

Sun Journal

National Pos t...According to The Globe and Mail, known as Canada's National Newspaper,Edward Burkhardt, chairman of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway, said an engineer had parked the train outside of the town a few hours before the disaster.The Canadian Transportation Safety Board, which probes all accidents, said it was looking for the train's "black box" data recorder.

Commentary and opinion below the fold...