Neighbors to North....Explosion (Portland: 2013, camping, live)

[elston]

LAC MEGANTIC, Que.

There was a train derailment and huge explosion today.....the train was carrying crude oil and was heading into Maine. . The town center has been destroyed.

Prayers for the townspeople. It sounds as if the disaster and human suffering is tremendous.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_3554360.html

[beltrams]

More: At least 1 dead, several reported missing after train carrying crude oil derails in Quebec | Fox News

and... http://bangordailynews.com/2013/07/0...cts-in-quebec/

It seems the train was parked, waiting for a new crew and it broke lose and ran into the center of Lac Megantic were it derailed and exploded.

Didn't we just have some kind of political protest over the environmental safety of these trains?

[Submariner]

Last May they made a big deal of moving a train with 104 cars of tar-sand crude through Maine to get it to St.John for refining.

Too corrosive for a pipeline, and too hazardous for Alberta to allow refining on-site.

Whether this stuff eventually goes through a pipeline in the US, or by rail in the US, or on trucks using the proposed East-West Corridor, they really want to get it moved across Maine to be refined.

[beltrams]

Hmmm.... Other news accounts of this wreck state that the train had been parked, waiting for a new crew, when it somehow got released. It was supposedly about 300 feet higher in elevation than the town center, so down the grade it went.

It will be very interesting to hear what investigators find as the cause of the brake failure/release.

One person has been confirmed dead as well.....

One of those other news accounts also stated that this was Bakken, South Dakota crude rather than tar sands crude, if that matters.

[Coaster]

This will definitely have an impact on the debate about oil moving through Maine, either by rail or the Portland-Montreal pipeline. The East-West Highway may be affected as well if an oil pipeline is finally admitted as being part of the package. The Lac Megantic train must have been loaded with Bakken light crude for it to burn so easily. I wonder if there weren't other cars with perhaps propane or some other easily flammable substance in the mix.

Submariner, are you sure it was tar sands oil in that train last May? So far as I know, the refineries in St. John aren't set up to process heavy sour crude. I found a news article from May 2012 about Bakken oil crossing Maine that mentioned only that small quantities of tar sands oil had been moved across Maine as a test.

http://www.kjonline.com/news/oil-cro...l?pagenum=full

[Newdaawn]

I found it interesting that one of the National news reporters - I think it was Savannah Guthrie - said that Lac Magantic was about 135 miles from the border with Maine. The last time we did the crossing there, when camping in Canada, that town was only 10 miles from the border. Shows how so very much you see on the news is just plain wrong.

[namder1]

I'm confused..........seems a little odd that an unmanned train carrying tar sand would explode. Just from a derailment?

[Coaster]

Originally Posted by namder1

I'm confused..........seems a little odd that an unmanned train carrying tar sand would explode. Just from a derailment?

It wasn't carrying tar sands oil. It was Bakken oil, which is much lighter and presumably more volatile. I haven't seen anything explaining how it caught fire, which is why I was wondering in my post above if perhaps other cars were included in the train that were carrying more flammable substances. Crude oil does burn, especially the lighter compounds.

[Vic_Vega]

The runaway crude train supposedly hit several parked propane cars on a siding when it derailed.

[elston]

Originally Posted by Newdaawn

I found it interesting that one of the National news reporters - I think it was Savannah Guthrie - said that Lac Magantic was about 135 miles from the border with Maine. The last time we did the crossing there, when camping in Canada, that town was only 10 miles from the border. Shows how so very much you see on the news is just plain wrong.

Well I was confused too. When I was a kid we lived in N Hatley Que.....over the Vermont border....near the city of Sherbrook. They said Lac Magantic was near Sherbrook ...... I don't think that was anywhere near Maine. But I am trying to remember geography from when I was just a little kid.