As many as 60 residents of a small town in eastern Quebec were missing and at least one person was killed early Saturday after a driverless train carrying crude oil derailed, and several tank cars caught fire and exploded.
Witnesses said the eruptions sent locals scrambling through the streets under the intense heat of towering fireballs and a red glow that illuminated the night sky. Some said flames were shot up higher than the steeple on a nearby church, and billowing black smoke could be seen more than 12 hours after the derailment, which involved a 73-car train..
The accident forced the evacuation of 1,000 people from their homes in the middle of the night in Lac-Megantic, a lakeside town of about 6,000 residents about 10 miles west of the Maine border.
The derailment caused several tanker rail cars to explode in the downtown core, a popular area known for its bars that is often bustling on summer weekend nights. Police said the first explosion tore through the town shortly after 1 a.m. Witnesses also reported four to six explosions.
“When you see the center of your town almost destroyed, you’ll understand that we’re asking ourselves how we are going to get through this event,” an emotional Mayor Colette Roy-Laroche told a televised news briefing.
The cause of the derailment was not immediately known.
Quebec provincial police Lt. Michel Brunet confirmed that one person had died. He refused to say how many others might be dead, but said authorities have been told “many” people have been reported missing.
The area around the derailment was blocked off and much of the small town’s center is affected, Aurelie Guindon, a spokeswoman for the region’s police force, said.
Dozens of residents gathered hours after the explosion at the edge of a wide security perimeter and many feared the worst. Less than a mile down the town’s main street, flames danced around a railway tanker that sat at the edge of the road.
“On a beautiful evening like this with the bar, there were a lot of people there,” said Bernard Demers, who owns a restaurant near the blast site. “It was a big explosion. It’s a catastrophe. It’s terrible for the population.”
Demers, who fled his home, said the explosion was “like an atomic bomb. It was very hot. … Everybody was afraid.”
Charles Coue said he and his wife felt the heat as they sprinted from their home after an explosion went off a couple of hundred yards away.
“It went boom and it came like a fireball,” he said.
Another resident Claude Bedard described the scene of the explosions as “dreadful.”
“The Metro store, Dollarama, everything that was there is gone,” he said.
Firefighters and rescue workers from several neighboring municipalities, including Sherbrooke and Saint-Georges-de-Beauce, were called in to help deal with the disaster.Firefighters from northern Maine were also deployed to the Quebec town, according to a spokesman at the sheriff’s office in Franklin County.
Television footage from Fox News showed plumes of black smoke and huge flames billowing from several structures and The Wall Street Journal reported oil had already leaked into a lake and a river in the vicinity.
Environment Quebec spokesman Christian Blanchette said a large but undetermined amount of fuel had also spilled into the Chaudiere River. Blanchette said the 73 cars were filled with crude oil, and at least four were damaged by the explosions and fire.
“We also have a spill on the lake and the river that is concerning us. We have advised the local municipalities downstream to be careful if they take their water from the Chaudiere River.”
He added that a mobile laboratory had been set up to monitor the quality of the air.
The train, reportedly heading toward Maine, belongs to Montreal Maine & Atlantic. According to the railroad’s website, the company owns more than 500 miles of track serving Maine, Vermont, Quebec and New Brunswick.
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