HEALING A SHATTERED TOWN
Residents of Lac-Megantic face a slow, emotional recovery from rail disaster
PEGGY CURRAN LAC-MEGANTIC, QUE. — How do you measure the life of a town?
The explosions and fire that tore through the historic heart of Lac-Megantic when the runaway train hauling tankers of crude oil tore through main street — an inferno so sprawling and intense it was visible from space — will have a profound impact on the town’s future, affecting everything from the livelihood and mental well-being of the survivors to the cleanliness of its water supply and the way it trains its part-time firefighters.
The death tally is expected to hit 50, the library and the town archives are gone, along with the post office, the drugstore, a hairdressing salon and a funeral home. Most of the lively restaurants, bars and shops, which gave the centre of town some buzz, were vaporized in the blaze.
Leafless sticks and stumps are all that remain of Parc des Veterans, the landscaped promenade that swept down to the waterfront with its view of shielding mountains. A rainbow glaze of oil and sludge shimmers on the surface of the lake and the Chaudiere River.
“To see the Chaudiere River as it is, I was crying,” said Jo Cooper, a longtime resident of the beautiful lakeside community 215 kilometres east of Montreal, who spent the last few summers doing environmental work in Saskatchewan.
Though Cooper was relieved to see the health food store where she now works survived the fire, “that is so secondary compared to the human factor. The tragedy attacked at every single level.”
Factories in Lac-Megantic’s industrial park, otherwise unaffected by the fire, were shut down while crews tested for oil in the sewer pipes. That came after small explosions in sewers, in residential neighbourhoods not initially included in the evacuation order, prompted firefighters to lift manhole covers as a precautionary measure. And the water purification plant was shut to empty reservoirs in an effort to flush any potential contaminants before residents are finally given the go-ahead to drink tap water again.
Lac-Megantic always had a lot going on for a town of 6,000 souls — including a summer concert series and a swimming marathon. That’s because it also served as a regional hub and market town for villages and hamlets sprinkled in the spectacularly hilly but lonely moose country between Sherbrooke, St-Georges-de-Beauce and the Maine border.
It was here that people came to borrow a book or go to the beach, to visit their elderly parents at the seniors’ residence or go bowling or listen to live music under the stars.
Buildings can be replaced, of course. Quebec Premier Pauline Marois’ promise of $60 million in aid will certainly help kick off the recovery.
The disaster could have much broader repercussions across the continent, stirring up passions and triggering an intense debate about train safety and pipeline construction wherever a rail line runs through town.
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Derek Gagne and Ted Parisee have been taking photographs and jotting down measurements along the length of the 13-kilometre track between the village of Nantes and the outer perimeter of the accident scene.
“What we are doing is scene reconstruction,” said Gagne, an engineer who works in Ottawa for the Transportation Safety Board (TSB). When disaster strikes in the transportation industry — air, rail, marine or
“HE WAS YELLING: ‘MAMA, MAMA, I’VE LOST EVERYTHING. MAMA, I’VE LOST MY CHILDREN, I’VE LOST MY WIFE.’ I COULD HEAR PEOPLE SCREAMING AND
SHOUTING. I HEARD THE BOOMS. I HEARD ALL OF IT. BUT WE HAD NO IDEA
THEN WHAT WAS GOING ON ...”
HELENE BOURGEOIS
pipeline — it’s their job to do the math.
Gagne and Parisee, a computer scientist, will be back later in the day, this time riding the length of the rail on an elevated car from which they will shoot video.
They’ll also use a differential Global Positioning System, which will give them a better sense of where the track slopes and where the runaway train would have picked up the deadly speed that caused it to derail.
Back in Ottawa, they will feed their data into a computer to develop an animated simulation of the accident for the TSB, a process Gagne expects will take at least two months to complete.
“What we do is like something you’d see on (the CSI TV series) — only it takes longer,” Parisee said. “We don’t assign blame. We’re all about safety.”
In launching the investigation, TSB investigator Don Ross said the unmanned train was travelling well in excess of the permissible speed when the derailment occurred.
But the safety board will also be looking at other factors, such as the practice by the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway (MMA) and other carriers to leave a fully loaded freight train without staff overnight and the already contentious use of general service rail containers, known as DOT-111 cars, to haul hazardous material.
At a time when crippling fuel costs and security restrictions against terrorism have dampened the appeal of air cargo, long haul freight trains have been experiencing a renaissance, particularly no-frills, low-cost companies such as the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic.
In the wake of the LacMegantic disaster, railways everywhere can expect much greater scrutiny by the public, and far more pressure on governments to regulate the types of goods that pass through their boundaries.
Tens of thousands of towns and cities in Canada, the United States and indeed, the rest of the world grew up around a railway station.
But that was 150 years ago, when train travel was the fastest and most efficient mode of transportation — and freight cars were mainly used to haul wood, dry goods and animals, not flammable liquids and corrosive chemicals.
During his whistle-stop visit to Lac-Megantic, MMA chairman Ed Burkhardt appeared most interested in singling out the conduct of train engineer Tom Harding, and in so doing, attempted to shift blame from the company and establish limited liability for the railway before insurance claims and lawsuits begin to roll in.
But Burkhardt also said his firm has many industrial clients who rely on the railway. The MMA has every hope of rebuilding a new track once the wreckage is cleared away, he said.
“These guys have to have rail service or ultimately, they will have to lay people off. We would end up having more problems than we create.”
At this point, it is unfathomable to imagine that Colette Roy-Larouche, LacMegantic’s tenacious mayor, never mind the town’s wounded citizenry, would allow an MMA train to ever chug through the middle of town. Even before the accident, the relationship between the town and the railway had been prickly.
A government placard posted at a level crossing near the outskirts of town hailed a long-term plan to upgrade the tracks, with the town pushing to have train traffic redirected away from the town centre. But never is a long time, especially when jobs hang in the balance.
“This is such a nice town,” said Meghan Plamondon, a former New Yorker who moved here with her chiropractor husband 31 years ago. “It would be terrible if we lose so many young people because their jobs are gone. I think of the quality of life they risk losing if they leave.”
It is never good when the phone rings in the middle of the night.
Across Quebec very early on July 6, firefighters, police officers, emergency teams and Red Cross workers were being roused from their beds. Journalists weren’t far behind. Get up, pack a bag, get to Lac-Megantic.
Far away in Sept-Iles, Helene Bourgeois picked up the phone to hear her 37-year-old son, Pascal Charest, crying inconsolably. But she had trouble making out what he was saying from the background noise.
“He was yelling: ‘Mama, Mama, I’ve lost everything. Mama, I’ve lost my children, I’ve lost my wife,’” Bourgeois said. “I could hear people screaming and shouting. I heard the booms. I heard all of it. But we had no idea then what was going on ...”
Charest had recently reunited with his wife, Talita Begnoche, after a separation, but they hadn’t yet moved into the same apartment. She and their two daughters, Bianca, 8, and Alyssa, 3, lived above one of the shops on Laval Street destroyed by the fire.
“All of them were sleeping,” Bourgeois said. “My son was over at the house of a friend who lives about five or six blocks away when he heard the noise. He went outside and saw a great ball of fire go in one side of their building and outside the other end of the block.
He yelled: ‘My children, my children.’ He tried to get in by the front and the back, but he couldn’t get near, it was too hot.”
“THAT’S WHEN THEY SAY PEOPLE ARE MISSING. THEY’RE NOT MISSING. IF YOU CAN’T FINE THEM, THEY’RE DEAD.”
MEGHAN PLAMONDON
Bourgeois said her son spent time in hospital, in shock and receiving medication. She came to town to pack up his apartment and take him to Sept-Iles, where she runs a home for handicapped people.
“We will start by taking care of him, because he needs help. After that, he can think about finding a job. Life continues. We don’t have a choice.”
Lac-Megantic’s ability to bounce back from this terrible accident will depend on the ability of its people to drum up the heart, soul and energy to start afresh.
The enormity of the crisis means there will be tremendous pressure on all levels of government to help out, and on railways to take a hard look at their protocols and rectify glaring flaws. Burkhardt said that the MMA will “lead the industry” in abandoning its practice of leaving unmanned trains on the track waiting for a replacement crew. But the MMA is likely to be too tangled up in legal wranglings — including the possibility of criminal prosecution or bankruptcy — to have much say in what happens to LacMegantic.
What the town does have going for it is spirit, witnessed in hundreds of acts of kindness, compassion and corporate neighbourliness since the derailment.
“Usually, grief is a year of firsts. You celebrate Christmas, Easter, the first of everything,” Lac-Megantic resident Cooper said. “Well, this is the first week of a new town, the beginning of a new town. And I believe it is going to be a better community.”
Plamondon, who grew up in New York, said one of the wonderful things about a small town like Lac-Megantic is that “you leave a trace.” People know who you are, and actually care.
“That’s when they say people are missing. They’re not missing. If you can’t find them, they’re dead.”
But as Lac-Megantic begins to recover, Plamondon said her adopted town could also learn something from New Yorkers, who refused to be undone — or overwhelmed — by the horrors of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“After 9-11, I learned to turn off the TV and do something, go out and help somebody.”
As people around the world reach out and offer their prayers, support and donations to the victims of the Lac-Megantic disaster, Plamondon wonders whether it will also make people there more sensitive to the hardships and calamities that befall people every day.
“You look at pictures of Egypt, where 50 people died and you see that mother mourning,” Plamondon said. “What happens on the other side of the world becomes real.”