Visiting the affected area on Sunday, Mr Harper said an "unbelievable disaster" had befallen Lac-Megantic, which is around 250km (155 miles) east of Montreal.
Saturday's pre-dawn explosion sent a fireball and black smoke into the air, forcing the evacuation of 2,000 people.
"This is an enormous area, 30 buildings just completely destroyed, for all intents and purposes incinerated," said Mr Harper. "There isn't a family that is not affected by this."
Sorry to hear about this devastation for our Canadian friends 😞
Catastrophic event for the town and the people. Deaths at 5 last I heard but it will no doubt go up. The towns ground water is ruined and the land is now contaminated. Businesses destroyed.
I can't understand how 72 tankers full of crude oil can be left unattended at any time.
What I read is the protocol is always the same. Park train, leave it till morning and go to hotel. The brakes could not or should not have been able to be released by anyone but the conductor. I think the rules are going to be changed.
Hard to comprehend for the people of that small town. To make matters worse there was a bar near the tracks where the derailment happened. It was packed with people.
What the Liberals spin is irrelevant here.
The real question is what do Canadians from all political orientation think? Who is ultimately responsible?
The editorial in today's Gazette is pretty clear:
"The weekend train derailment in Lac-Mégantic is a terrible human and environmental tragedy that raises important policy questions for federal authorities who regulate the rail industry in Canada."
What has Harper and his cabinet do in the last seven years to help prevent such accident? Think about it.
What has Harper and his cabinet do in the last seven years to help prevent such accident? Think about it.
Not much need to think about it. Harper is an oil man, not a people man. His dad worked for oil and he worked for oil..........oil is #1.
before they decided to hack every single email and electronic transaction ever sent by anyone.
They do????? Really?????? Great!!!!! Stephen Harper your a ...........
Oh never mind, he probably already knows.
I heard something about that somewhere. Sadly this will be another case of fixing the barn door after the horse has got out. Now, hopefully, people in government will be rushing to make changes so this never happens again. I knew of the explosion and fire but it really hit me when I seen the aerial view. I was reading an article about a fellow who was on the patio of a bar only a few meters away and he heard the noise of the train coming toooooo fast and he got up and grabbed his bicycle and peddled for all he was worth. When he looked back all he could see was a tower of fire. He said he was glad he smoked or he wouldn't have been out on the patio but inside where most everyone else was (and maybe still are). I guess in this case, smoking, saved his life.
I still can't understand how cars and cars of explosive material can be let unattended! I mean if the train didn't start to move on it's own, there could have been many more scenarios that could have cause a disaster. What's parked unattended in R/R yards all over this country......we have no idea.
Your link seems to be US Federal Regulations. I wonder what ours are? I read an interview with the conductor who said leaving the train unattended was normal.
Hi there everyone!
I just got an email from the friendly team at eBay Ca to say I'd had replies to this topic, so I popped over to see what they were. It's all days old now of course.The Lac-Megantic disaster has dropped out of the news down here and in any case has been overshadowed by the train disaster in France. Still, it's very sad to see the pictures of the devastation that have been posted here.
Forgive me if this has been covered in your links ( I didn't click through to read them all) but there has been some suggestion that firefighers earlier in the day had put out a fire on another train and found the one in question with it's engine running, so they turned it off. Which seems to have contributed to the brakes no longer being powered, hence the train started rolling.
Not sure how that works but it sounds feasible.
I guess there'd be a lot of finger-pointing happening at the moment.
Human error. How does one live with oneself after knowing your error caused so much destruction?
There are many stories floating around out there, some accurate and some far from it. I read that there was an earlier fire on the same train but now it seems the fire was on another train.
Human error..........it will always happen in life, no matter how hard we try to prevent it.
The major thing that bothers me is why are RR cars full of combustible material allowed to go through communities at all, much less sit there unattended overnight? We have no idea what is sitting in our cities, towns and villages that can take out half the area or if there is a leak pollute the area for who knows how long. That's what bothers me the most and maybe this tragedy is a wakeup call for everyone.
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