ABSTRACT
The July 2013 railway disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, resulted in 47 fatalities from BLEVE explosions and fires caused by an unattended 74-railcar freight train derailment of multiple railcars containing a total of 8 M liters of petroleum crude oil. The five-locomotive headed train of the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic (MM&A) railway had been left unattended with inadequate braking and rolled uncontrolled down into the town center where it then derailed at high speed, one hour after midnight. Earlier that night a local fire department had been called by a member of the public to a fire in the one locomotive that had been left running with its unattended cab unlocked. The downtown core of businesses and homes was destroyed leaving substantial soil and water pollution requiring a currently-estimated $400M in clean up and unspecified legal costs.
