It’s being overshadowed by the plane crash at SFO, but a train loaded with crude oil derailed overnight in the small town of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, just across the border from Maine. Witnesses reported five or six huge explosions (one of which is captured on video in the linked article), and the downtown is apparently destroyed. Dozens of buildings and homes have been flattened. One bit of good news is that there has been only one death reported so far, but there may be a hundred people still missing.
seems that when they can get into the town area there might be lots of fatalities.
I’ve been following this story, and I am puzzled. The train was apparently carrying crude oil. How could crude oil be that explosive?
It’s a major news story here, since I live only about 3 hours away. 3 people confirmed dead at the moment, and people don’t yet know how many are missing, but it’s probably a large number.
Scary and sad.
Oh wow. That video was scary. I hope they don’t find lots more people dead once they can get in there further, but with an explosion like that… man that’s scary. 
So odd that the train moved so far and that crude oil would explode. It seems like someone was probably behind this for some unknown reason. But I haven’t seen anything to suggest that yet in news stories.
7 miles seems like an improbable distance for the train to roll on its own even bypassing the fact the railroad is sure the brakes were applied properly.
I’m thinking something else had to ignite and burn for the crude to catch fire.
Here is the MSDS in PDF form for Crude: http://www.encana.com/pdf/business/contractors/msds/crude-sour.pdf
The train probably weighed something on the order of 100 tons or more. Once it starts rolling - for wahtever reason - gravity is going to take it downhill until it reaches a bigger opposing hill, or it falls off the tracks. It fell off the tracks on a shap curve in town.
The oil involved is believed to be the infamous “tar sands crude” from western Canada. That shit is so thick, the tank cars are heated to keep the oil in a liquid state. No idea what is used for heating but it may have been an ignition source,
Interesting side note - some of the fire depts that responded to the call for help are from small towns in Maine more than 100 miles away! For those of you who have ever served, just think of a 2 hour response for a mutual aid call!
Was the explosion bigger than the Texas fertilizer one?
Death toll now at 5. Still quite a few missing.
Why would that matter?
Interesting. I have never heard this before.
I wonder. The videos had a hissing, roaring sound to them that immediately reminded me of the Great Toronto Propane Explosion of 2008.
Where did you hear that? According to Wiki, it is from Bakken, ND. That is also from shale, and may or may not be infamous.
I know that the transportation of heavy crude through pipelines is accomplished through the addition of diluent. In this case, were the cars loaded in North Dakota, or transferred to ship/rail in the Gulf after traveling down a pipeline? Does the diluent stay in the crude until it gets to the refinery, or only in the pipeline phase? I suspect that diluent would make the crude more explosive, since it is usually naptha, or other light hydrocarbons.
Trying to get a sense of scale on things.
today reports have 5 dead and 40 missing. there may not be enough left of some of the missing to recover or recognize.
Notice that the same MSDS lists a flash point of -40 C* and says it’s flammable. Crude oil itself is relatively inert but most crudes give off gasses and vapors that can be very volatile. It doesn’t take much to make it explode.
Incidentally, and you’re probably going to hear a lot more about this in the next few weeks as pipeline proponents capitalize on this disaster, this is one of the major advantages of shipping crude oil by pipeline instead of rail. In a pipeline, the oil is held under pressure which reduces vaporization and degassing and thus volatility. Rail cars are not only not held under pressure, but they usually can’t be filled completely due to weight constraints so there’s room for explosive and toxic gasses to accumulate.
*Which I think depends on crude composition, with -40 being the lowest end of the range, but it’s all room temperature and below.
The Bakken is an unconventional reservoir (a small sandstone layer between two oil-rich shale layers) but it’s still conventional oil and so doesn’t need the treatments the sludge coming out of northern Alberta does.
So, it sounds like any talk about Alberta tar sands is just BS from people with an agenda.
So far, there hasn’t been much reporting about this in the US, but I suspect that will change as the official death toll rises.
No agendas here, just folks trying to put together stray bits and pieces of a very complex story that ended in a major tragedy.
Shutting down the engine shuts down the air compressor. Without an air compressor to keep up the pressure, the brakes will eventually let go! FD says it notified the RR. RR says it’s checking.
A bit more, actually. According to this, each of those tank cars carried 30,000 gallons of crude oil. This spec (PDF) of a 30,000 gallon tank car shows a fully loaded weight of 263,000 lb, or 120 tons. So the entire train (73 cars) weighed about 8,800 tons.
Hold on a second. I thought that, in any modern train, releasing the air pressure is what caused the brakes to activate, and that this was a safety feature designed to prevent runaways like this. Was I wrong, or was this feature abandoned, or what?
I was thinking that too and read up on wikipedia. You’re right that releasing air pressure on the line activates the brakes. But the brakes are powered by a compressed air reservoir on each car. And if the brake is kept on for a long time, eventually the air in the reservoir leaks away, and the brakes lose power. Modern trains have a 2nd air line to keep those reservoirs topped off; apparently it’s this supply that was shut off in this accident.