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Vol. 4 Issue 3
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August 2013
What's Travelling by Rail Through Our Community?
The train disaster in LacMégantic, Que., has Mayor Bernie Vermette demanding to know what's travelling by rail through our community. Vermette says residents never know what is in the rail cars that travel through town every day. "What we would need to know is what kind of materials is toxic and what can be dangerous to human life and whatever, so at least our emergency measures operations that … we have, would
know how to address the issue if something did happen," Town council will discuss at its next meeting how officials can find out more about the contents of the rail cars, Vermette said. Concerns about rail safety have surfaced in the wake of a fatal train derailment that set off a series of explosions in Lac-Mégantic earlier in July. The train, which was carrying crude oil, had been parked uphill of LacMégantic before it somehow became
loose and careened into the small community early morning on July 6th. The incident killed at least 15 people and destroyed more then 30 buildings in the heart of the small town in Quebec's Eastern Townships. About 40 people remain missing. Police in Quebec announced that a criminal investigation is underway as officers continue to comb through the rubble and search for the missing people. The incident has shone the spotlight on the political debate over oil transportation and Canada's rapidly expanding oil-byrail industry. Rail shipments of oil in Canada have gone from about 6,000 train carloads in 2009 to an estimated 14,000 this year, according to Statistics Canada and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.