Please note: An earlier version of the title contained a translation-error, which apparently made it come across as inappropriate. That wasn’t my intention, and I apologize for the error.
Background
Lac-Mégantic is a town of 5747 people (as of 2023), located eastern Canada 209km/130mi east of Montreal and 140km/87mi south of Quebec City (both measurements in linear distance) near the border to the USA.
Back in 2013 the rail line running through Lac-Mégantic was owned by the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway (MMA for short), a Maine (USA)-based freight rail line. The company had acquired the unelectrified main line in 2003 when the previous owner, Iron Road Railways, declared bankruptcy and was forced to sell off assets. At the time of purchase the line measured 1199km/745mi. The company immediately implemented broad cost-cutting measures, including replacing multi-driver crews with remote control when several locomotives were hauling a train and cutting back the maintenance budget. These cost-cutting measures were blamed for MMA racking up an average of 36.1 accidents per 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) driven, more than twice the North American average (14.6). The cost-cutting also involved reduced frequency of service, which further drove away customers, leading to large parts of the line being abandoned whole as they were no longer bringing in enough money. This brought the length down to 820km/510mi by early 2013.
Lac-Megantic features a small rail yard east of the downtown area, trains intending to bypass the yard are subjected to a relatively sharp turn to the northwest or east side of the yard respectively, forming a track-triangle. At the time of the accident the northwest turn had a 16kph/10mph speed limit.
The Train Involved
MMA 2 was a 1433m/4.701ft long tanker train listed with a total weight of 10287 metric tons. It consisted of a leading locomotive, a “VB”-car (a former freight car converted to house hardware for the remote control system), 4 helper-locomotives, a box car (enclosed freight car) serving as a “safety buffer” and 72 tank cars, each carrying 113 thousand liters/30 thousand US-gallons of crude oil. The train was chartered by World Fuel Services as part of a shipment operation between North Dakota, USA, and the Irving Oil Refinery in New Brunswick, Canada. MMA 2 was scheduled to start at the Canadian Pacific Railroad (CPR) yard at Côte-Saint-Luc (a suburb of Montreal, Canada) and take its cargo to the MMA-yard at Brownville Junction (USA) where the train cars would be picked up by another rail service provider.
The leading locomotive was MMA #5017, a General Electric C30–7. The C30–7 is a six-axle multipurpose diesel locomotive introduced in 1976. Each C30–7 measures 20.5m/67.25ft in length at a weight of 191 metric tons and has a power output of 2200kW/3000hp. Locomotives number 2 (#5026) and 4 (#5023) were also C30–7, with all three formerly belonging to the Burlington Northern Railroad (BN).
Locomotives number 3 and 5 were loaned locomotives from the CIT-group (branded CITX), numbered 3053 and 3166 respectively. Both locomotives were EMD SD40–2, a six-axle diesel locomotive introduced in 1972. Each SD40–2 measures 20.98m/68.8ft in length at a weight of 167 metric tons and has a power output of 2200kW/3000hp.
The cargo-hauling part of the train consisted of 72 DOT-111 tank cars, also referred to as the TC-111 in Canada. The DOT-111, named after the safety standard it was constructed to adhere to, is a four-axle unpressurized tank car measuring 18m/59ft in length at an empty weight of 29.5 metric tons. The DOT-111 can be considered the standard tank car in North America during the 2000s and 2010s, with 80% of the Canadian tank car fleet and 69% of the US tank car fleet being DOT-111 cars.
The Runaway
MMA 2 departs the CPR-yard at Côte-Saint-Luc in the early hours of the 5th of July 2013 and heads to Farnham in the province of Quebec, where a MMA-yard is used for a crew change. Here, the train is taken over by Mister Harding, who drives it to a preplanned crew change point at the town of Nantes, 11km/6.8mi west-northwest of Lac-Mégantic. He reaches his duty-time limit by the time he gets there, which is why the train has to stop at the town. Harding stops the train on the main line track at 11pm, shuts down locomotives 2–5 and sets the brakes. He has to park on the main line as MMA had reserved the local siding for freight cars going to the particle board factory at Lac-Mégantic. Leaving a train unattended on the main line was unusual, but there were no guidelines or laws prohibiting it. Crucially, the siding was equipped with a derailer, a device which would derail any train moving across it without authorization, while the main line was not.
Mister Harding applies “several” handbrakes on the train after parking it (the exact number will be a point of discussion after the accident) and also applies the train’s pneumatic brakes. The pneumatic brakes are the reason why #5017 couldn’t be shut down, as its engine was needed to provide power to the compressor which keeps the train’s pneumatic system topped off. The way the brakes on the train were set up they needed a consistent air pressure to remain applied, without the compressor providing pressurization the brakes would eventually release. At last Mister Harding contacts the rail traffic controller at Farnham and reports that the train was secured, before contacting the rail traffic controller at Bangor (Maine, USA) to notify them of mechanical difficulties he had observed during his trip, explaining that the locomotive had emitted excessive amounts of black and white smoke from its exhaust while also surging uncontrollably, meaning it wouldn’t maintain a steady rpm which made it difficult to control the speed. It’s decided that the issue will be addressed in the morning and that #5017 can keep idling until then to keep the compressor running.
Mister Harding is then picked up by a taxi driven by Mister Turcotte who takes him to the Hotel l’Eau Berge in downtown Lac-Mégantic. During the trip Mister Harding admits that he feels unsafe leaving a locomotive running, even just idling, unattended while it’s spitting oil and producing excessive black smoke. Mister Turcotte would later report that Mister Harding was “covered in droplets of oil”, which he would also find on the windshield of his taxi. Upon reaching the hotel Mister Harding says that he will call MMA’s US-office, whose instructions will have priority over those given by the traffic controllers.
The Nantes fire department is alerted at 11:50pm when a local resident calls in and reports seeing flames on #5017. The firefighters confirm that a fire is visible atop the locomotive, on the main structure of the body. They follow standard protocols by entering the cab and shutting off the locomotive, cutting the fuel supply to what they suspect to be a burning engine. Otherwise, as the local fire chief (Mister Lambert) later explained, they would make their own job harder as the locomotive would keep pumping fuel from its tanks into the fire. The fire is quickly extinguished, leading to the fire department notifying MMA’s traffic controller at Farnham and asking them to send the driver to the train. MMA refuses the request, pointing out that Mister Harding can’t return to the train yet as he has to fulfil a minimum rest period between working hours. They send two track maintenance workers instead, who are unfamiliar with the operation of the train. The workers confirm the train to be safe at approximately 0:45am on July 6th, 2013, and leave along with the remaining firefighters and police officers who had been guarding the train.
With the locomotive shut down the compressor no longer receives the power necessary to keep pressurizing the pneumatic system, leading to a gradual drop in air pressure. The pressure eventually (the report lists 0:56am) drops far enough for the brakes to release to the point where the heavy train, which is parked on a slight downhill gradient, can’t be held in place anymore and starts moving despite the handbrakes. A passerby witnesses the train move along the rail line at slow speed at 1:00am, later recounting how there was no engine-sound and no lights turned on either. The rail line didn’t contain any occupancy sensors, meaning the dispatch center is none the wiser about a train moving (unintended or otherwise) as long as nobody tells them.
Shortly thereafter Mister Montminy, one of the firefighters who had extinguished the fire aboard #5017, comes upon an activated level crossing on Quebec Route 161, a short distance southeast of where he had helped extinguish the fire. He waits at the crossing but can’t spot any sign of an approaching train (the engine sounds or the horn trains usually sound when approaching a crossing in Canada), eventually deciding that the crossing must be malfunctioning. He slowly drives across the tracks, barely making it to the other side when an unilluminated train races past in complete silence apart from the rolling noise. No horn, no engine sound, nothing. Mister Montminy recognizes it as the train he just helped put out less than an hour ago. He quickly turns around and drives back to the fire station to tell his coworkers of what he witnessed.
In the meantime the train picks up more and more speed on the downhill rail line, calculations later place it at 105kph/65mph upon entering Lac-Mégantic by 1:13am. Witnesses within the town see the train rush past, making “infernal” noise (but no engine noise) and with sparks flying from the wheels, but they don’t spot any headlights on it. Mister Fluet leaves the Musi-Café in downtown Lac-Mégantic just at that point, he walks away from the rail line by coincidence and is thus missed by the freight train by about 50m/160ft. He later recalls:
“It was moving at a hellish speed … no lights, no signals, nothing at all. There was no warning. It was a black blob that came out of nowhere. I realized they were oil tankers and they were going to blow up, so I yelled that to my friends and I got out of there. If we had stayed where we were, we would have been roasted.”
The train crosses Frontenac Street, the town’s main street, at 1:14am, without the crossing even activating as the train races through town. It then enters a set of points at the beginning of the sharp right hand turn towards the local yard, travelling at more than six times the speed limit. Quite obviously, it doesn’t have a chance to make it through the turn intact.
Derailment and Inferno
By some miracle the locomotives manage to get through the turn, but the tanker cars tear off at the coupler and go flying out of the right hand turn the rails try to force them into. Some of the derailing tank cars immediately rupture, spewing out a blanket of oil which is set alight by sparks and heat from the train’s wheels, creating what can and has been referred to as a tsunami made of oil and fire. The initial explosion reaches three times the height of the surrounding buildings, with four to six following explosions being reported by witnesses. Guests at the nearby Musi-Café feel the ground shake, with some suspecting an earthquake. Some of the guests flee the building fearing a collapse while the staff convinces others to take cover under the tables. Most of those who fled the building don’t survive, failing to outrun the burning flood wave moving through town, while those who chose to remain inside mostly manage to escape at a later point before the building burns to the ground.
The burning oil floods sewers and the underground storm drains, emerging elsewhere in town as pillars of fire shoot manhole covers into the air or spew out of chimneys after igniting basements. 63 of the 72 tank cars derail, leaking about six million liters/1.59 million gallons of oil. The status of the alarm is raised again and again within mere minutes, eventually involving over 150 firefighters from Quebec (Canada) and Maine (USA). The local hospital declares a “Code Orange”, a preset plan to deal with a high number of severe injuries, but barely receives any, with a customer from the Musi-Café being considered the worst injured survivor, suffering second degree burns to his arm. A worker from the red cross happens to give the best explanation of why the low number of injured survivors to treat was a tragic and bad thing:
“[There are] no wounded. They’re all dead.”
1000 people have to leave their homes due to the fire, with another 1000 following later due to toxic smoke lingering in the streets. A volunteer firefighter manages to uncouple the rear nine undamaged tank cars while the blaze is still raging, intending to have them towed to safety. Mister Harding and two workers from the local particle board factory use a dual mode vehicle (a car or truck which can operate on roads and rail lines) to pull five of the cars away, but can’t find another level crossing to move their vehicle around the cars to retrieve the other four. Mister Lafontaine, owner of a local excavation-company then brings one of his excavators, trying to pull away the remaining cars. This initially fails, as the train cars had their brakes fully applied. The dual mode vehicle had been able to hook up its pneumatic system to release the brakes, but the excavator has no such system. Harding tells the men to rupture the air lines between the cars’ onboard reservoirs (which keep the brakes applied in park-mode) with the excavator’s shovel, which allows them to pull the remaining four cars away, two at a time. Mister Lafontaine’s employees also aided the fire department in hauling in gravel, burying (and thus blocking) manhole covers and creating firebreaks (barriers of non-combustible material) to somewhat limit where oil could spread.
The fire is contained and prevented from spreading even further by the early afternoon, at which point firefighting switches to focusing on extinguishing the blaze. The area where the inferno originated is still inaccessible 20 hours after the accident, with five pools of burning oil creating significant heat which keeps responders at a distance. Five unexploded tank cars are doused in water to cool them down, successfully preventing explosions, while two are still burning 36 hours after the derailment.
The fire department finally manages to report successful extinguishing of the fire by the following evening, falling a few hours short of a two-day blaze.
Loss and Damage
42 bodies were found in the remains of the downtown area and transported to Montreal for identification. 39 were identified by late August, the 40th by April 2014. Identification heavily relied on relatives providing DNA samples of their loved ones along with dental records if those had survived the fire. Five residents remained missing and were eventually declared deceased without any remains ever recovered. Two of the three notary offices in the town were destroyed by the blaze, meaning a number of last will and testaments couldn’t be retrieved. 30 buildings were destroyed by the fire, including the library, post office, bank and several other houses, wiping out 115 businesses and several private residences. 36 of the 39 remaining buildings in the downtown area had to be demolished due to damage from fire or oil contamination. In essence, Lac-Mégantic no longer had a downtown area.
The drinking water supply also had to be disabled as oil had leaked into it, requiring tanker trucks to bring in drinking water until repairs could be made, although a warning to only consume boiled water remained in place.
Aftermath
The locomotives and remote-control equipment car had passed through Lac-Mégantic’s yard after detaching from the derailing train, with responders retrieving them on a slight incline 1.34km/0.8mi further down the track. Investigators retrieved the data-logger from the leading locomotive and inspected the section of the train they had present at the site, finding that all handbrakes were applied and the wheels showed significant blue discoloration, evidence of the wheels being exposed to excessive heat. On trains and rail cars this usually happens when trains have their brakes applied strongly and/or for prolonged periods of time while in motion. The report also noted that the coupler between locomotives 2 and 3 was broken and a cable had been pinched within it, indicating that the locomotives had separated at one point before reconnecting as the rear locomotives caught up again.
Mister Burkhard, the president and CEO of Rail World (the company who owned MMA) visited the site of the fire on the 10th of July, being met by booing and heckling from residents. The news had already spread the fact that the company had an extremely high accident rate compared to the national average. MMA didn’t wait for the investigation by the province of Quebec or the federal TSB (Transportation Safety Board, the entity conducting the investigation) to present any information before announcing that Mister Harding would be suspended due to not properly setting the brakes on the train. Mister Harding himself followed his lawyer’s advice not to talk to the media, police or TSB, while MMA ordered all employees not to talk to the police without a company lawyer. The company’s offices were raided by police on the 25th of July and then again searched by the TSB on the first of August. The justification for both was the securing of evidence relating to insufficient maintenance conducted by the company.
Mister Lafontaine (a different gentleman than the one who helped in the rescue effort with the excavator, but from the same company and family), who had lost three close relatives and an employee in the disaster, raised concerns about the visibly neglected condition of MMA-owned rail lines along with the increasing number of dangerous goods transports running through the town. He asked that the rail line be rerouted around the town and MMA’s maintenance be scrutinized to avoid a repeat. At the time Transport Canada, the government entity in charge of rail, road, marine and air transportation, permitted rail lines to operate as long as they had at least five solid sleepers (the wooden or concrete beams connecting the rails) and no more than 14 damaged ones on 12m/39ft of track. This demand had been met by the track at the site of the accident, if somewhat barely, and was a large part of the low speed limit set for the area.
MMA’s track condition was so poor that, by 2013, 23 sections on their line were limited to as little as 8kph/5mph due to the poor condition of the track. It’s unknown why MMA chose not to use millions of available funding from a government infrastructure program in 2007 to fix the line.
Miss Roy-Laroche, the town’s mayor at the time, sought assistance from the federal and local government to have the rail line rebuilt on a new route outside the downtown area, a proposal the railway vehemently opposed due to cost. She also begged tourists not to shun the area, while admitting understanding for the shock along with knowledge of what was lost:
“We will rebuild our town. But at the same time, we have to accept that it won’t be the one we knew. Very old buildings, heritage and architecture all disappeared and at the beginning, no one realized the magnitude and now we are starting to understand the consequences.”
MMA announced that they would move the crew change/break location from Nantes to Sherbrooke, allowing crews to rest closer to the train and/or have a direct handover to another crew. However, the announcement was met with the city’s mayor expressing that the move also shifted the danger from a relatively small town to Quebec’s sixth-largest city (Population: 161323 people in 2016).
Just days after the accident, on the eighth of July, police called TSB-investigators and employees of Transport Canada to an MMA train parked on a downhill section of track near Frontenac (Quebec). The train had been parked there on the fifth and left with the engine running and a cab door open. It was found that five hand brakes had been set on the train, while regulations required nine on level track and more on a sloped one.
This incident quickly focused the attention at the site of the disaster to the brakes of that train. Investigators calculated MMA 2 would have required 146700 pounds of braking force to keep it in place on the downhill track at Nantes. The pneumatic brakes on the train theoretically provided up to 249760 pounds of braking power, but faulty valves discovered on the second locomotive with evidence of faulty/non-standard repair attempts limited braking power to about 215500 pounds. The guidelines in place dictated that at least 15 tank cars’ handbrakes would have had to be set also (referring to level track), but investigators found out that only 7 had been applied. At least 17 would have been required on the sloped track at Nantes. Instead, 72 of the cars only had the pneumatic brakes hold them in place. With just seven handbrakes their combined braking power was calculated at 48600 pounds, less than a third of what’s required to keep the train in place. Usually a train driver would perform a test of the hand brakes by releasing the pneumatic brakes on the train while separating the compressor from the circuit, but it turned out that Mister Harding had left the compressor connected, meaning when he released air-pressure the compressor would immediately refill the system, adding pneumatic braking-power on top of the handbrakes’ power. He apparently failed to notice this. It’s unknown why Mister Harding only applied half the required handbrakes, since he refused to talk to just about anyone the investigation couldn’t determine if he forgot to apply enough handbrakes, miscalculated the braking-power or figured that it wasn’t needed (perhaps motivated by wanting to get the process done).
Thus, the main cause of the accident is the application of insufficient brakes. Technically the train was safe as it sat at Nantes idling, but a single point of failure (in this case the compressor stopping) changed that and could thus lead to a catastrophic event. Modern railways are meant to operate under the idea that no single point of failure can lead to a catastrophe, which is why both the hand brakes and pneumatic brakes had to be able to hold the train on their own. It’s important to note at this point that the TSB is prohibited from declaring guilt on individuals, they are there to determine the cause, not who’s at fault. If they were involved in declaring responsible individuals guilty people might be even less willing to talk to them.
In the case of MMA 2 that “failure” was the fire department doing exactly what they are supposed to in the case of a burning, running locomotive, access the driver’s cab if possible and shut down the engine so no more fuel is piped into a suspected engine fire. After they shut off the engine air pressure slowly reduced in the pneumatic system. Standard procedure intended for an employee of the railway company, usually a driver, to examine the train after the fire was extinguished to determine if it could be left as-is or if immediate measures had to be taken. The workers MMA sent to MMA 2 at Nantes were unfamiliar with how to operate the train and thus failed to notice that insufficient hand brakes were set.
A Reset Safety Control system (RSC) which would usually automatically apply the brakes in the event of a power failure (as in, the engine shutting off) was found to have been retrofitted to the three General Electric locomotives on the train in a poor fashion, which led to the system not working on the night of the accident.
The responders at Nantes trusted the MMA employees and left the train as it were, shut off with just the hand brakes applied. The pneumatic brakes had been set to parking mode prior to Mister Harding leaving the train, meaning they actually required air pressure to stay applied. Automatic mode (used when the train is moving) would see the brakes apply if air pressure drops/is lost, but in parking mode air pressure is actually required to keep them applied. Automatic mode means air pressure from the locomotive’s compressor is used to keep the brakes on the cars released, if it drops air from the cars’ onboard reservoirs will flow to the brakes, applying them. In contrast, parking mode sees a different valve-setting where the air pressure from the locomotive directly applies the brakes, regardless of the cars’ reservoir status. If pressure drops in this setting, the brakes will release.
Parking mode has the system pressurized at 75psi, without the compressor the pneumatic pressure aboard MMA 2 eventually dropped below 27psi at which point gravity overcame the few set handbrakes and the train began its fatal journey.
Once investigators figured out why the train had started rolling they backtracked one step, wanting to figure out why the fire department had had to respond to the train. Why had #5023 caught fire while parked at idling, something locomotives like it were meant to do for long periods of time?
A different driver had reported issues with the engine two days prior, witnessing engine surges (sudden, brief loss or increase of rpm) and reporting them to the maintenance facility at Derby, Canada. The issue was decided to be not severe enough to pull the locomotive from service or even ban it from leading trains, which is how it ended up at the head of MMA 2 on the day of the accident. Here, Mister Harding witnessed the same issue, with the engine failing to maintain a steady rpm at full throttle, along with excessive smoke coming from the exhaust. Furthermore, he spotted droplets of oil being ejected into the surroundings after stopping at Nantes. Mister Harding had actually contacted his superiors who told him he could leave the faulty locomotive until the morning, not only something felt unsure about but also a direct violation of MMA’s safety guideline 9126:
“When there is an abnormal condition such as noise, smoke or odor coming from engine, the engine should be shut down. Employees must immediately leave the engine room and shut down the engine by emergency “shut down” button at the control stand, control panel or fueling location on either side of the locomotive.”
As such, #5017 should’ve never been part of MMA 2, much less be left idling at Nantes without a driver present. Investigators had the locomotive towed to a maintenance facility at Saint John where they observed workers performing a partial engine teardown. And this brought the root cause to light, literally. A bearing on the camshaft (a rod in a piston engine which controls the opening and closing of the valves) had fractured after its mounting bolt had been tightened down too much. Looking through maintenance records showed that #5017 had been towed into the Derby maintenance facility on the 7th of October 2012 for an engine failure. The camshaft had been damaged after a connecting rod (the piece connecting the piston to the crankshaft, transfering the linear motion of the piston into rotation) had failed. A crack in the engine block was also found during examination of the engine.
#5017 left the maintenance facility with a repaired engine but was back by mid-March 2013 for excessive oil consumption. Workers found oil to be leaking at the cam bearing which had been replaced and further tightened its mounting bolts, removing the leakage. The investigators found that the initial crack in the block, which would usually require a new block or at the very least welding, had been filled and closed with a polymer-based material instead, which was neither intended nor appropriate for such repairs. This material had allowed oil to continue seeping out of the crack, which the maintenance workers then (temporarily) fixed by overtightening the bolts, pressing the bearing against the crack. The overly tight bolts caused the bearing to suffer from excessive stress while under operation, eventually breaking it in two.
The broken camshaft bearing led to reduced oil supply to the valves, which suffered damage to the point of seizing in place, punching into and eventually through the piston as they no longer retracted out of the way when closing. Engine oil could now flow freely through the cylinder, intake manifold and upper exhaust, with some of it reaching the locomotive’s turbocharger and settling within it. The engine fire then started when the turbocharger heated up far enough to ignite the oil within it, which is why the fire was focussed around the exhaust of the locomotive.
In total, the TSB listed 18 factors which came together to cause the accident according to their final report, which was published on the 19th of August 2014. The MMA’s “weak and insufficient” safety culture originally led to a cheap and fast repair being applied to the damaged engine on #5017. Safety guidelines dictating that a likely faulty locomotive displaying the behavior #5017 displayed should be pulled from service, but instead it was decided twice to postpone handling the issue. On the second instance the actively malfunctioning train was parked on an inclined track with no runaway protection (such as a derailer) in place and left idling unattended by a driver who had applied too few handbrakes and then failed to perform the brake test properly. The backup safety system (RSC) was also out of order as it had not been installed (as the locomotives were retrofitted with it) and maintained properly. On a side-note, the TSB inspected the RSC-systems on five other GE-locomotives in MMA’s fleet. Out of the eight locomotives, only three had a functioning RSC-system.
Once the fire department shut down the engine (as they were meant to) brake pressure began to drop, with the untrained employees sent by MMA unable to spot the lack of applied handbrakes, which led to air pressure dropping to the point of the train rolling away, at which point the tragedy was just about unavoidable.
One more factor the investigation looked into was the cargo itself. It was known that the DOT-111 rail cars were prone to punctures in derailments or collisions, but how could the crude oil, which is actually hard to ignite, lead to almost literal hell being unleashed on the town? They considered several theories, such as the derailing train destroying a propane tank, other chemicals being left in the tank cars from previous transports or additives being added to the oil (which usually has a sirup-like texture) to speed up the load/unload process. The latter is a common practice when pumping oil through pipelines, but highly unusual for rail transport.
In the end all of those theories were disproven but the investigation found that the oil, which originated from the Bakken oil field located in North Dakota (USA), had not been properly identified in shipping papers. Oil from the Bakken oil field contained unusually high levels of hydrogen sulphide gas, a flammable, corrosive, poisonous and explosive gas. In fact, some pipeline operators have maximums for the gas in their contracts due to safety concerns, which Bakken oil tends to overshoot. This false documentation led to the volatility of the cargo being underestimated. This explains why the oil ignited sooner and burned faster than expected, although the correctly identified oil could still legally have been on the same train as the DOT-111 cars were certified for it, too.
The investigation also criticized Transport Canada for insufficient audits and generally insufficient oversight, claiming they don’t do enough to ensure that guidelines and laws are obeyed.
Lastly, the investigation also looked into the possible role of single-man operations, but found no evidence that a second man on the locomotive would have led to a directly different result. Another driver, a “fireman” (assistant) or a conductor may have provided a second opinion on the behavior of the defective locomotive or verified the number of hand brakes, but they just as well may not have done that.
The results of the investigation prompted Transport Canada to reevaluate MMA’s tracks, finding six segments of their rail line to fall below required minimum conditions. Startlingly a section with an especially high concentration of faulty sleepers (which could cause derailments as a train may push the rails apart) was found in close proximity to a propane storage facility. One section of the line was shut down by Transport Canada due to its poor condition until a subsequent inspection would show improvements, with later inspections eventually leading to the line between Lennoxville and Lac-Mégantic (the one MMA 2 ran on) being shut down whole due to insufficient condition.
Claims to the three main local insurers for property damages alone ended up at around 50 Million USD (65.8 Million USD/60.9 Million Euros in 2024), not counting lost income, businesses destroyed or rendered inaccessible, or cost of treatment and therapy for injuries. The leaking oil caused such a heavy contamination of the soil with benzene (a chemical compound found in oil) that during the first month firefighters and investigators could only work 15 minute shifts in the affected area. The contamination was so severe that some buildings which had escaped fire and smoke had to be demolished because they were sitting on several feet of oil-soaked soil. Residents were offered a last tour of the downtown area’s remains in December 2014 before a near-complete demolition of the area commenced.
Oil also ran through the burning downtown area and seeped into the adjacent Chaudiére River, which was contaminated with approximately 100 thousand liters/26 thousand gallons. The river carried the oil 80km/50mi downstream to the town of Saint-Georges, forcing the local government to switch the town’s water supply to a smaller lake which meant residents had to severely limit their water-usage in order to not run the lake dry with just their normal daily water use. Chaudiére River could not be used to draw water from it for over two months.
Workers contracted by MMA to remove oil and the remains of the tank cars stopped their work on July 17th, 2013, as they had not received any payment from the MMA. They only continued once the municipality funded the effort. By July 30th the municipality demanded MMA to reimburse them for the paid 7.6 Million USD (10 Million USD/9.2 Million Euros in 2024), to which Mister Burkhard replied that they didn’t have the funds for that and had to wait for their insurance to pay them so they could pay the municipality.
MMA was also subjected to a class action lawsuit filed by Mister Larochelle (a local lawyer who had lost his office in the disaster) along with a group of Canadian and US law firms on behalf of the Mister Gagne, the owner of the Musi-Café (which was obliterated by the blaze) and a widower of one of the victims. The suit alleged that the CPR (who were also among the companies subjected to the suit) negligently chose the transport provider with the poorest safety-record in the industry to carry highly explosive cargo on trackage which was sub-standard at best. Going on, the suit claims that CPR knew MMA was in financial struggles. They also took aim at the Union Tank Car Company, Trinity Industries and GE Capital Rail Services who provided the old, non-reinforced DOT-111 tank cars which were unsuitable for the transport of the Bakken oil at more than 10kph/6.2mph.
Rail World, MMA’s parent company, saw several individual lawsuits filed against it at the same time, all of which being placed in the company’s home jurisdiction of Cook County, Illinois (USA). In contrast to Canada, where compensation for non-economic damages (like trauma) was capped at 304 thousand Euros/326 thousand USD, there was no limit on it in the US-State of Illinois. For scale, a single one of these lawsuits, filed on behalf of ten victims, demanded over 50 Million USD (65.8 Million USD/60.9 Million Euros in 2024).
Quebec’s health minister at the Time, Mister Hébert, announced on the seventh of August 2013 that the province may sue MMA to recover some of the costs of its aid to victims. This announcement was the last nail in the coffin, and MMA declared bankruptcy a few hours later.
Several of the lawsuits carried on despite the bankruptcy, since they usually named more than one company as at fault. A large settlement of damages for survivors and victims’ relatives was approved by a US-based bankruptcy judge in October 2015, awarding several claimants a total of 345 Million USD (446.5 Million USD/413.2 Million USD in 2024).
The criminal proceedings were going on at the same time, finally leading to a trial starting on the second of October 2017 after a three weeks long jury selection process. Mister Harding, a rail traffic controller and an operations manager each found themselves charged with 47 counts of criminal negligence causing death, facing life imprisonment if convicted. The trial was intended to see 36 witnesses for the prosecution being heard and had a scheduled sentencing date of mid-december 2017. However, the defendants’ side objected to further proceedings on the 12th of December 2017, claiming all the heard witnesses and provided evidence failed to prove sufficient guilt. The trial was put o hold until January before, on the 19th of that month, the jury returned from a nine-day deliberation and announced that they found the three defendants not guilty. As such, nobody was ever sentenced in a criminal court for their role in the accident.
Mister Clusiault, who lost his daughter in the fire, was present on the final day of the trial and actually expressed satisfaction with the outcome, saying the three men put on trial weren’t the ones to blame for what happened, they were victims of a greater failures higher up the hierarchy. He said:
“These are human beings with families who worked hard all their lives. These aren’t killers. We treated them like killers.”
Regulations around the transport of corrosive or explosive materials, especially oil, were tightened up across North America following the accident. Canada banned the practice of leaving trains hauling dangerous cargo unattended on main lines and dictated that locomotives left idling unattended had to have the driver’s cab locked and the throttle-lever handle removed to prevent unauthorized commandeering of an idling train. Meanwhile the US-American FRA (Federal Railroad Administration) introduced a standardized notification to be given to dispatchers when a train is left unattended, including the configuration of the train, what kind of track it’s on and how many brakes have been applied. They also requested various documentation from companies loading/shipping crude oil, announcing that companies who didn’t provide the requested data would be subjected to FRA investigators visiting the sites and conducting data collection themselves.
The FRA and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) launched a focused effort on inspecting North Dakota’s oil trains in August 2013, calling it the “Bakken Blitz”. They found that Bakken crude oil was regularly misidentified in shipping documentation, with strongly recommended testing of mixed oils being found to have not been conducted in several cases. The FRA noted that misidentification of the oil can lead to first responders having fatally insufficient information, prohibiting the best possible response to a leakage or fire. They also found that oil trains were commonly overloaded, which largely went unnoticed since oil trains don’t pass over in-motion scales to check their weight. Overloading the tanker trains, as they explained, increases the risk of leakages. The result were twice as many leaks from crude oil shipments as from trains carrying alcohols, the next-highest hazardous liquid, even though both are transported by rail in comparable volumes.
The FRA upgraded crude oil to the highest standard of shipping requirements for hazardous material in February 2014 and made testing of any crude oil before shipping mandatory while the Canadian government required unmodified DOT-111 tank cars to be retired by 2017 and demanded emergency response plans from any company transporting oil by rail.
The FRA and Transport Canada jointly announced a new DOT-117 standard for tank cars carrying flammable products in May 2015, with all DOT-111 cars being required to either be rebuilt to the new standard or retire by May 2025. The new standard is mainly focused on making leaks in the case of an accident far less likely than they are on DOT-111 cars, and includes improved emergency vents for the last-resort release of the cargo in a controlled manner to avoid an explosion if inside temperatures become critical.
MMA #5017, the locomotive leading MMA 2 and whose lackluster condition played a major role in the accident, was legally banned from repair/resale. It was spotted sitting in a storage yard by May 2020 and, with investigations and litigations finally finding their end, has since been scrapped.
From The Ashes
A 1400m²/15000ft² development of commercial buildings was constructed on the eastern edge of Lac-Mégantic shortly after the accident, accommodating a first group of businesses who faced permanent displacement from their original locations. This was later expanded by a new bridge across Chaudière River and a large new commercial district. Among the new developments is a new Musi-Café, which opened in December 2014 after operating out of a 150-seat tent during late 2013 to collect money for the rebuilding effort.
Students from two universities in Quebec collected around 100 thousand books to fill a new library while other libraries and museums searched their archives to find as many historic documents about the town as they could, intending to at least partially replace what was lost.
Rebuilding efforts largely finished around 2015, with the new commercial districts in full operation and the site of the inferno rebuilt. The rail line still runs through the town on its original route, and despite locals expressing concern about the risks oil shipments still use the line also. The local rail yard was removed though, and in 2023 Mister Rodriguez, the federal transport minister, announced that planning work for a bypass rail line had begun, which would take traffic around the town instead.
The area of and around the former rail yard is now mostly occupied by a large park, with an official memorial located where the train derailed on the day of the accident. The memorial stretches from the southern side of the rail line across the tracks and adjacent road to the St.-Agnes church, which narrowly escaped destruction, where a book-shaped statue made of black stone lists the names of all 47 victims.
The site of the tragedy is still easily visible within Lac-Mégantic, with a large gap in the down which can be likened to a scar. It is, however, not just a disused area but actually maintained as such, with the park on the site of the former rail yard and the adjacent “Park of the Generations” giving the area new purpose and meaning without covering anything up. The town makes it very clear in their marketing that the parks along with the events held within them are intended to be an expression of life and happiness instead or being reserved for sadness and grief alone. A special “summer of solace” was also held in 2023 around the accident’s 10th anniversary, centered around concerts and art exhibits.
_______________________________________________________________
This was an accident I intended to cover for a long time, and finally felt like I could tackle it. This is my longest article so far, so if you made it all the way through, THANK YOU.
_______________________________________________________________
I have chosen to stay off Medium’s monetization offers to keep these stories as accessible as possible, but you can support me with a small tip via “Buy me a coffee” if you feel like it.
_______________________________________________________________
A kind reader is posting the installments on reddit for me, I cannot interact with you there but I will read the feedback and corrections. You can find the post right here.
