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Louis-Serge Parent lives about 100 meters from the Musi-Café bar in Lac-Mégantic, Que., which was at the epicenter of the destruction after an oil-laden train hit the town on the lake in 2013, causing an inferno. He still remembers seeing orange flames.
She said the trauma of that day left her feeling like a “zombie.”
Forty-seven people were killed and 26 orphaned. Thirty people died in the Musi-Café alone. The derailment spilled more than six million liters of crude oil and prompted a series of safety investigations, reviews, criminal and civil lawsuits.
A decade later, Parent, 77, said Canadian rail safety is now no better than it was then.
“Not at all. It’s the same,” he said. “We face a feeling of helplessness.… We have to fight.”
Many affected by the Quebec disaster watched the news in horror earlier this month when the Ohio city was rocked by a toxic train derailment.

On February 3, a Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous materials derailed in East Palestine. The explosion and efforts to clean it up eventually sent dark chemical dust into the air, left nearby rivers a sickening rainbow, and caused environmental fallout that has yet to be measured.
The chairman of the US National Transportation Safety Board, Jennifer Homendy, confirmed that the cause of the Ohio accident was an overheated wheel bearing, which the track sensor caught too late. He said crews were unable to stop the derailment which released hazardous materials into up to 11 cars.
US security officials are demanding to know why security checks failed. These questions have been asked before in Canada and the federal authorities introduced several changes after the incident in Lac-Mégantic. Even so, rail safety experts warn that the risk of a rail disaster in Canada is still very high.
The biggest crash in 150 years has not changed
The Lac-Mégantic tragedy was Canada’s worst rail accident in more than 150 years, according to rail safety consultant Ian Naish, former director of rail accident investigations with the Transportation Safety Board.
He said the security measures put in place since the disaster were “marginal”.
Bruce Campbell, an adjunct professor of environmental studies at York University in Toronto, wrote the book The Lac-Mégantic Rail Disaster: Public Betrayal, Justice Denied, agreed.
“window [is] it’s still open to some kind of Lac-Megantic disaster,” he said.
Campbell said that despite repeated calls for a special inquiry after the 2013 tragedy, none were held. investigator, investigators, the accident investigators attributed the disaster to various causes, mainly leaving the train unattended on the main line, failing to set sufficient hand brakes and lack of backup safety mechanisms.
And in a 2022 report, Canada’s Transportation Safety board found safety practices were lacking and employees were working to the point of public fatigue on Montreal, Main and Atlantic, the regional train that ran a train that crashed in Quebec.
Campbell said rail industry lobbying has delayed critical safety changes.
“People who live close to the railway – whether it’s in Lac-Mégantic or whether it’s in the heart of Toronto or Vancouver – are still at risk,” he said.
Lawyers representing the families of the dead indicated that the train passed through Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Toronto and Montreal, before reaching Lac-Mégantic.
In 2020, about eight years after the Lac-Mégantic accident, the auditor general’s office warned that Transport Canada still had not done enough to prevent risks in the transport of dangerous goods.
“We found that the department was unable to demonstrate that its oversight activities had improved the railroad company’s compliance with regulations that mitigated major safety risks,” the audit team wrote.
Kathy Fox, chair of the Canadian Transportation Safety Board (TSB), has expressed her disappointment that the rail industry has failed to make “physical” changes – such as better braking systems – to prevent runaway trains, as described in the 2022 report.
“Progress is being made, but very slowly,” he said. “I can’t speak [Ohio] it can’t happen here.”
4 accidents on average per year involving dangerous goods
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada reported 86 rail accidents involving dangerous goods in 2021, two of which involved cargo spills.
The TSB said over the past decade there had been an average of about four accidents a year involving the release of dangerous goods. These include:
- Nov. 10, 1979: A freight train with several tanker cars full of hazardous chemicals erupted in Mississauga, Ont., causing a massive fireball and the mass evacuation of more than 200,000 people.
- July 6, 2013: Train derailment in Lac-Mégantic, Que. killed 47 people in the worst flood disaster in Canadian history.
- February 4, 2019: Three Calgary crew members were killed when a grain train derailed near Field, BC
After the Lac-Mégantic disaster, regulatory changes by Transport Canada established safety rules and required railroads to provide emergency responders with data on dangerous goods shipped through municipalities.
The tanker car model is improved to be more stable and not break or spill if it skids. But Naish said TSB’s investigation into the 2019 train derailment near Guernsey, Sask., illustrated how more powerful tanks ruptured and spilled at higher speeds.
“There is a lot of work being done to improve the tank car, but all bets are off if it goes faster than 35 miles per hour,” Naish said.
WATCH | Frequency of train derailments in North America:
Allan Zarembski, director of the railway engineering and safety program at the University of Delaware, discussed how often trains derail in North America.
And he said that the rail operator has failed to listen to TSB’s calls to add chemicals to explosive cargos to reduce their flammability, or replace the ancient hand brakes with electric parking brakes.
Campbell said train accidents and train derailments had been on the rise before the pandemic hit trade, with mainline track derailments rising each year to peak in 2019. In 2021, a total of 16 derailments involved dangerous goods, according to TSB data.
The Canadian Railway Association, an industry lobby group, did not respond to CBC’s request for an interview.
But it has insisted in the past that Canadian railways are safer than ever and the most cost effective.
“We’ve known for a long time that Canadian freight rail is the safest in North America,” said Marc Brazeau, president and CEO of the association, in a Feb. 13 release.

The railway industry needs to be checked
Railroad workers such as Fritz Edler of the Railroad United union say North American railroads refuse to disclose to the public what their cars are carrying, and often ship dangerous goods directly through cities and suburbs.
“They don’t want you to know,” Edler told CBC News.
He pointed out that most spills or “releases” happen in remote locations. In 2005, a CN train derailed near Squamish, BC, spewing 40,000 liters of sodium hydroxide into the Cheakamus River from the damaged carriage.
Allan Zarembski, director of the railroad engineering and safety program at the University of Delaware, said the Ohio derailment was unfortunate but not typical. He said there are only 10 to 20 hazardous chemical spills across North America each year.
“This is a disgusting derailment. But the number of disgusting derailments is few and far between,” said Zarembski.
“Would I say there’s no risk? Well, no. I wouldn’t say that.”
But he said the railroad is motivated to prevent costly and costly derailments.
Lac-Mégantic has the highest costs.
Survivor Christian Lafontaine lost his brother and sister-in-law. He tattooed the image of escape – the city’s beautiful church framed by a burning fire on his right bicep.
A civil class action lawsuit against Canadian Pacific is also pending. The survivors, the Quebec government and the insurance company that compensated the victims, have applied to the Quebec Court of Appeal to overturn the December trial decision that acquitted the rail operator of its role in the Lac-Mégantic tragedy. The train driver and two other railway employees were acquitted of criminal wrongdoing in the case in 2018.
Joel Rochon, lead counsel for the class action plaintiffs, believes there will be more accidents and spills unless the industry changes its culture and safety standards.
“The railroad industry, in its current state, cannot be trusted to police itself, and requires regulation and active government intervention…responsibility,” Rochon wrote to the CBC on February 27.

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