Posted on 07/06/2013 4:37:47 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The center of a Quebec town has been wiped out, according to the mayor, after a runaway freight train carrying crude oil derailed and exploded in a fireball at 1am on Saturday.
One person was killed and about 30 buildings were destroyed as the unmanned train exploded. About 60 people are believed to be missing, but the force of the fire has slowed rescue efforts.
Parts of the town were evacuated in the early hours as fireballs shot several-metres in the air, flames spread to nearby homes and thick acrid smoke filled the air in Lac-Megantic, which is close to the Maine border and about 250km from Montreal.
The name of the person killed in the blaze, caused by a runaway Montreal Maine & Atlantic train, has not yet been named.
The train's conductor, who was in a hotel at the town at the time of the crash, is being questioned by police, according to CTV News.
He had parked the train in Nantes, about 12km away, as he waited for someone to take over his shift, when it somehow 'got released', the railway company's vice-president Joseph McGonigle said.
'We're not sure what happened, but the engineer did everything by the book. He had parked the train and was waiting for his relief,' he added.
The train's engine was found about 1km from where the explosions took place, creating what authorities have described as 'a war zone'.
About 30 shops and homes in the town center, including the library and local weekly newspaper's office, were destroyed by the fire, which is being dealt with by firefighters from Quebec and Maine.
'Words cannot tell the damage that had been done,' Sergeant Gregory Gomez del Prado, of Quebec Police, said. 'Many, many buildings have been damaged. Its a catastrophe for the town.....
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
The Keystone pipeline wasn’t going anywhere near Quebec. It would run from Alberta to the South.
You have to have a lot of heat to get to that point.
Which won't take one drop of oil to Quebec and points farther East.
Stop digging....”several” is subject to interpretation...sheesh
Here's some folks to investigate:
http://www.350maine.org/train_blockade
“#MMA railroad says “small fire on locomotive due 2 broken fuel line” was put out in Nantes b4 tragedy. http://t.co/TtkMT2g1TM “
http://350.org/
My original point was that when we talk about a large fireball, we usually don’t speak of it in terms of several meters. You can get that from a charcoal barbeque.
Buncha morons.
Thought the purpose was to bring Canadian oil down through America for refining, thus eliminating the need to truck or rail vast amounts of crude on less safe transport, such as this one which went horribly wrong?
It still is, but keep in mind that North Dakota is the second largest oil producer in the nation, and that that has developed over the last five years or so (passing Louisiana, California, and Alaska). Pipeline capacity isn't close to keeping up.
The type of crude matters, too, and the heavy Athabascan crude is better suited as a feedstock for refineries geared toward that type of feedstock.
The oil from the Bakken/Three Forks is a light, sweet crude which is more suitable as feedstock for refineries which have traditionally refined Arab Light or North Sea (Brent) oil. Those refineries are on the coasts, and the market is there (very little pipeline capacity headed in that direction, so rail has proven to be the expedient and cheaper alternative).
That said, who in their right mind would leave a train of cars loaded with crude oil and pressurized gas unattended? It'd be a terrorist's wet dream.
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