Catastrophe...

ThinkingManNeil

ThinkingManNeil

Charter Member
The picturesque town of Lac Magantic, located in Quebec's Eastern Townships not far from the Maine border, has been devastated by a massive explosion and fire following the derailment of a freight train in the center of the town. The train, which was hauling 73 tank cars full of crude oil, derailed causing at least four cars to catch fire and explode, throwing large volumes of burning oil over a wide area and causing an even larger and more devastating fire. Much of the town's core has been destroyed and several people are reported missing. Over 1,000 inhabitants of the tourist town of 6,000 have been forced to evacuate the area.

Please keep them in your thoughts.

N.
 
Dangerousdave26 said:
So far the police say only one fatality which is rather amazing given the size of the fire.
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Unfortunately, that number will rise as about 60 persons are unaccounted for. One resident tried in vain to call his mother in law, her house being one of the thirty or so engulfed by the flames. As it was in the middle of the night, many were probably sound asleep when the runaway train derailed. The hope now is that many where simply away on vacation when it happened.

713621-centre-ville-lac-megantic-ete.jpg


Even with all the smoke, you can see that it was quite picturesque. The last Lassie TV series was filmed on locations in the "Townships" as the general architecture is very close to New-England style, minus the catholic churches all over the place.
 
This will be an interesting one to sort out. I knew crude oil could burn, but I didn't know it could explode.

I remember the explosion in Mississisauga, ON some time ago, that was traced to a defective tank car. Quite a bit of that town was wiped out. I don't remember what the casualties were. I remember the incident because I worked for a railroad that used to send tank cars from the yard in Detroit across the river into Canada, and I further remember wondering if those cars passed through that yard on their way to that wreck.

We have relatives in a place called Wakefield, near Ottawa, but that's a little ways west and south of this tragedy. Such a shame. My thoughts and prayers for the lost and their families.
 
Read up on this a little to discover the crew were to have set the brakes on the train, which was apparently stopped. In the US railroads have what are called "hours of service" laws, a crew can not spend more than 11 hours and 59 minutes on duty before they run out of time and have to stop exactly where they are, and be relieved. Railroads try never to let that happen (if the crew went over 11/59 they drew a day's pay for this violation when I was on the RR, and the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) would fine the railroad as well). They usually put a train in siding for this event, and set the brakes on the engines plus the train to lock it in place. This is a tedious process that in part involves climbing up and setting the hand brake on the first dozen or so cars of the train, plus some on the rear end as well. What some guys do is cheat and just rely on the engine brakes to hold the train. They don't always hold, and sometimes they slip. When I was an operator in Michigan, we had a runaway like that one morning that rolled for several miles down a grade that was just steep enough to let this happen. We sent a switch engine very quickly from the yard I was working at to catch the head end, tie on and apply its brakes. At the same time a clerk at a yard office several miles away on the downhill side ran out to the tracks, climbed aboard the other end and began the monkey bar drill of clambering over the moving cars and setting the hand brakes, one at a time, on a moving train. He actually set the brakes on the last six or so cars, which really helped bring it to a stop. I remember dropping by the head end on the way home (this was late in the midnight shift, around 730 or so in the morning). You could feel the friction heat radiating from the steel wheels on the engines. It just about matched the heat being radiated by the Terminal Superintendent, Terminal Trainmaster, and duty trainmaster who were all present.
 
Latest news; two more bodies were found as the firefighters closed-in on the burning cars. They used fire-retarding foam to quell the blazing wagons. Two are still burning while half a dozen are being constantly showered with water to keep their temperature down.

A municipal worker volunteered to go in the middle of that inferno to cut a main pipe that had burst and was emptying the drinking water reserve. He was surrounded by firefighters who maintained a "wet corridor" while he shut the valve.

One witness says that the runaway train did blew its sirens seconds before taking the curve. I'm curious to know, SSI01, if it is possible for a "phantom train" to do so.
 
Not likely, with no one aboard. The info I saw (HuffPo article) said there was no conductor on the train and the train had its brakes set, or was in the process of having its brakes set, prior to the accident. We're only dealing with preliminaries here, but if the witness heard warning blasts on a horn, then maybe

1)the crew going off-duty were in the process of setting up the brakes when this happened;

2)there was a switch or yard crew moving the unattended train, and perhaps they were in the process of setting or releasing the brakes on the train when it got away from them;

3)a relief train crew coming on duty were setting things up to leave when this happened.

In each case it would make sense they would be sounding their horn. The switch engine we sent after that runaway ran through red signals and over broken switches to reach the head end of the runaway, they were on their horn all the way down to hook-up. Might have been another train in the vicinity, too, maybe he heard that horn.

Will be interesting to see what the accident board says.
 
Body count is now at five. Remains are being send to Montréal for identification. For the moment, they can't even tell if they were male or female. Police are still searching for about 40 peoples missing.
 
SSI01 said:
This will be an interesting one to sort out. I knew crude oil could burn, but I didn't know it could explode.
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It would take a significant catalyst to get even light crude to spontaneously explode, however, the latest reports suggest it was a possibly bleve incident (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_liquid_expanding_vapor_explosion) and from the damage, it would appear to be consistent with a bleve.

The problem with a bleve scenario is that it requires a heat source that heats up the product to the point at which the bleve will occur and in the case of crude oil that would have taken either a very hot fire and/or a very long period of time (in other words, it would have taken some time to occur and should have lead to a major evacuation). The only way to avoid a bleve, which will often have a similar effect as a "fuel-air explosion", is to either stop the source of heat or a controlled explosion of the tank cars (it will still cause an explosion but one that is far weaker and one that can be more "directed" by the demolition team).
 

My guesswork may have been pretty close to the truth, it seems . . .

"Edward Burkhardt, president and CEO of the railway's parent company, Rail World Inc., visited Lac-Megantic Wednesday for the first time since the accident.

He said Wednesday that a train engineer has been suspended without pay.
​

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"I think he did something wrong. It's hard to explain why someone didn't do something," Burkhardt said. "We think he applied some hand brakes but the question is did he apply enough of them. He said he applied 11 hand brakes we think that's not true. Initially we believed him but now we don't."


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/0...ene-death-toll/?test=latestnews#ixzz2YhbayxCl​
 
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