Lac-Mégantic: a runaway oil train destroyed a town — 47 dead in minutes

Shortly after 1:00 am on July 6, 2013, a 73-car Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway train carrying Bakken crude oil rolled away from where it was parked in Nantes, Quebec, 11 km west of Lac-Mégantic. With no one aboard, it accelerated to 105 km/h on a 1.2% downhill grade. At 1:14 am it derailed in the centre of Lac-Mégantic. The resulting explosion and fire destroyed 30 buildings, burned for nearly two days, and killed 47 people — most of them asleep.

The cause was a cascade of failures. The train was left unattended with only one engineer on shift. When a fire on the lead locomotive drew the Nantes fire department, firefighters shut the engine down. The air compressor stopped, brake pressure bled off, and the 7 to 11 handbrakes that had been applied were not enough to hold the train on the grade. The Transportation Safety Board concluded 17 to 26 handbrakes were needed. MMA had no rule against leaving a running train unattended on a grade near a populated area.

The disaster destroyed MMA. The railway filed for bankruptcy in August 2013. Three employees — engineer Thomas Harding, operations manager Jean DeMaître, and rail traffic controller Richard Labrie — were charged with 47 counts of criminal negligence causing death but acquitted in 2018 after a jury trial. In a second trial, six MMA employees pleaded guilty to regulatory charges. MMA subsidiary MMAC was fined $1 million for polluting the river. Canada overhauled rail safety, banned weak tank cars, and required two-person crews, but for the 47 dead the changes came too late.