77 petrol tanker runaway train derail and explode


J

julienjj

Noodle is good
Very tragic accident that has caused massive damages to the city of Lac-Megantic .

Late last night a train went in a runaway during a crew change. The train was supposed to stay parked for a couple of hours, but started moving after the crew left, despite having been left on the brakes. At some point the 5 engines separated from the cars(they where found half a mile away from the derailment, on the brakes), which kept on going toward the city, and derailed in a curve. Many tankers exploded on impacts, wiping many shops, the library and at least a dozen of houses, some building spared from the blast radius took fire. Many tankers where ruptured and kept on spitting flames for most of the day. Firefighters where not allowed to approach within a mile of the zone until early this morning, because the explosion hazard of those pressurized tanker was too great.

Officials are reporting 60 missing citizens, since it is the vacation season, hopefully, these people where out of town.

2000 have been evacuated because of the toxics fumes.

[video=youtube;qXr7n8nuEnQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXr7n8nuEnQ[/video]
 
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Julien, I've deleted the photo you posted due to copyright concerns.

YouTube allows us to embed videos, so the video is OK, but the paper almost certainly doesn't. Since this is a commercial website, they could theoretically charge me a hefty fee.

Please provide a link to the page instead, that's OK and complies with copyright. The link I posted above has lots of photos and videos of the incredible devastation.
 
They kept quiet about it, but ive been there before, and the local fire station was just in front of the library. I saw no footage or video showing the local fire dept trucks, they likely have been destroyed in the blast.
 
If you view the daylight aerial footage above, the amount of devastation is just incredible... Much of the town is gone. Wiped flat, nothing left. Very sad.
 
Hopefully they will find why the train started moving. Its very disturbing because the train went downhill on the brakes and the loco got uncoupled, but the brake should go in emergency if any hose get disconnected, unless the brake air tanks got complely flat on air in each car.
 
This is tragic. My wife's and I thoughts and prayers go out to all the families who have missing ones and to the town itself.
 
Just saw that on our local news here - it look really bad. Hopefully they can find out what happened so it won't happen again
 
It seems that after the engineer left it for the night, the locomotive caught fire (probably a typical GE stack fire), and the fire dept was called, but apparently not the engineer. Quite possible that the engine shut down, or was shut down by a fireman at that point. Apparently, that fire dept has been called many times due to locomotive fires.

Some time later, the train went for a wander, so the question is, was the engine being shut down the reason the brakes didn't hold? Weren't any hand brakes applied, if it was being left unattended?

The will be a huge inquiry, and I'm predicting this will be the end of he MMA, i can't see how the line will survive this.


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Engine fires still wouldn't have drained the air out of the reservoirs on the tank cars, from the news reports they said that the cars started to separate, someone could have pulled the pin and bleed the cars off causing them to roll freely without dynamiting.
 
I seem to remember the leakdown test being 2psi per minute. At that rate, everything would have been empty of air in less than an hour.
 
the emergency reservoir would still have air, each rail car has two reservoir the main and the emergency, also when the leakage test is performed, the brakes on the engine are cut out so the power will not recharge the main air line, however if the main air line was drained of air, emergency reservoir would then be released applying the brakes, it is possible for the emergency air to bleed off by it self, that is why train crews are required to apply sufficient number of hand brakes and test them to make sure they hold if that happens, possible the crew did not apply any hand breaks, but did the entire train including power roll on its own or did it separate?
 
My thoughts and prayers are with the folks over there in Quebec what a terrible thing to happen in your community. Its been a big item in the news , I hope they don't get into a lot of ignorant speculation before a proper inquiry is held.
 
scroggin said:
... I hope they don't get into a lot of ignorant speculation before a proper inquiry is held.
Click to expand...

That scroggin, is an inevitable consequence of a disaster like this. Remember the talk about TWA flight 800 being shot down, even though they retrieved enough of the plane to show that the middle gas tank was the site of the explosion. There was no evidence at all, none, that it had been hit by a missile, supposedly fired from a Ticonderoga class cruiser. The nearest ship was a cruiser, but it was, IIRC, 150 nmi. away, (recorded in ship's log, along with GPS readings for that time), and out of range. I may be wrong about the miles, but the plane was out of range. A show on the military channel recently covered a number of conspiracies about this tragedy.
 
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Cjcrescent said:
That scroggin, is an inevitable consequence of a disaster like this. Remember the talk about TWA flight 800 being shot down, even though they retrieved enough of the plane to show that the middle gas tank was the site of the explosion. There was no evidence at all, none, that it had been hit by a missile, supposedly fired from a Ticonderoga class cruiser. The nearest ship was a cruiser, but it was, IIRC, 150 nmi. away, (recorded in ship's log, along with GPS readings for that time), and out of range. I may be wrong about the miles, but the plane was out of range. A show on the military channel recently covered a number of conspiracies about this tragedy.
Click to expand...

I guess that's true....In terms of public respect and affection journalists seem to have found their niche somewhere between tree-snake and politition
 
Sometimes it seems that they are more concerned with a headline "grabber" more than they are concerned with the truth! I believe that even as far back as the 1890's this was called "yellow journalism". I believe that today more and more of this is happening with tragedies like this.

I wonder how many conspiracies will develop from this tragedy, and how many will hang on even after the truth is found out. Just look at all the 9/11 conspiracies still out there.
 
bnsf971 said:
Here is a newer article:
http://news.yahoo.com/criminal-probe-quebec-oil-train-derailment-213336218.html
Click to expand...

What I don't understand is where the locomotives were. It was an eastbound train, and the cars apparently ran away eastbound, but the loco (one at least) must have been attached in order to keep the brake line charged. Or have I misunderstood the geography there, and the cars actually ran away westbound leaving the locos behind? I certainly haven't seen any references in the news to the locomotives being pushed into Lac-Megantic by the weight of the cars behind them.
 
John P said:
What I don't understand is where the locomotives were. It was an eastbound train, and the cars apparently ran away eastbound, but the loco (one at least) must have been attached in order to keep the brake line charged. Or have I misunderstood the geography there, and the cars actually ran away westbound leaving the locos behind? I certainly haven't seen any references in the news to the locomotives being pushed into Lac-Megantic by the weight of the cars behind them.
Click to expand...

I think thee was only one locomotive, from what I understand the cars and locomotive separated, but like you, I've never gotten an explanation of where the loco ended up.


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