page_title: Lac-Mégantic rail disaster
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Lac-Mégantic rail disaster / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Sur ordre du gouvernement, les drapeaux du Québec ont été mis en berne du 11 au 17 juillet 2013 sur tous les édifices gouvernementaux québécois, dont l'Hôtel du Parlement (photo), afin de rendre hommage aux victimes de l'accident ferroviaire de Lac-Mégantic, survenu le 6 juillet.English: The Government of Quebec ordered all Quebec flags on government buildings, including the Parliament Building in Quebec City (photo), to be lowered at half staff between July 11 and 17, 2013 following the July 6, 2013 Lac-Mégantic train derailment.
context_page_description: The Lac-Mégantic rail disaster occurred in the town of Lac-Mégantic, in the Eastern Townships region of Quebec, Canada, at approximately 01:15 EDT, on July 6, 2013, when an unattended 74-car freight train carrying Bakken Formation crude oil rolled down a 1.2% grade from Nantes and derailed downtown, resulting in the fire and explosion of multiple tank cars. Forty-two people were confirmed dead, with five more missing and presumed dead. More than 30 buildings in the town's centre, roughly half of the downtown area, were destroyed, and all but three of the thirty-nine remaining downtown buildings had to be demolished due to petroleum contamination of the townsite. Initial newspaper reports described a 1-kilometre blast radius.
  The death toll of 47 makes it the fourth-deadliest rail accident in Canadian history, and the deadliest involving a non-passenger train. It is also the deadliest rail accident since Canada's confederation in 1867; the last Canadian rail accident to have a higher death toll was the St-Hilaire train disaster in 1864, which killed 99.
context_section_description: All but 800 of the evacuated residents were allowed to return to their homes in the afternoon of the third day; all but 200 were able to return by the sixth day. At least twenty had no home to which to return. Some homes had reportedly been broken into during their vacancies, although police deny that homes were looted.
  Rail World's president and CEO Edward Burkhardt visited the town on July 10, 2013, and was heckled by residents. After the accident, the railway's safety record was called into question: over the previous decade the firm recorded a higher accident rate than the rest of the U.S. rail fleet, according to data from the Federal Railroad Administration. In the previous year, the railroad had 36.1 accidents per million miles travelled, in comparison to a national average of 14.6 accidents. Burkhardt's historical involvement with a 1996 derailment on the Wisconsin Central in which hazardous materials burned for over two weeks also drew renewed scrutiny. While the actual cause of the disaster was still under provincial (Sûreté du Québec) and federal (Transportation Safety Board) investigation, Burkhardt announced the railway had suspended the engineer for allegedly improperly setting the handbrakes on the rail cars. The engineer was made unavailable at the suggestion of his lawyer and MMA instructed its employees not to answer questions from police without first consulting the company's lawyers. A former colleague established an Albany-based legal defence fund for the engineer. The Sûreté du Québec raided MMA offices in Farnham on July 25 as part of a criminal investigation into the Lac-Mégantic fatalities; the Transportation Safety Board conducted its own search backed by RCMP on August 1.
  Raymond Lafontaine, a local contractor who lost a son, two daughters-in-law and an employee, raised concerns about the poor condition of MMA-owned track and about the increasing quantity of dangerous goods being transported through downtown areas by rail, not only in Lac-Mégantic but in cities such as Sherbrooke. He asked that the tracks be repaired and rerouted to bypass the town's core.
  Lac-Mégantic mayor Colette Roy-Laroche sought assistance from federal and provincial governments to move the trains away from the downtown, a proposal opposed by the railway due to cost, and asked tourists not to abandon the region. MMA announced that it intends to make future crew changes in Sherbrooke so that trains are no longer left unattended; that city's mayor Bernard Sévigny expressed concern that this merely shifts the hazard into the centre of Quebec's sixth-largest city.
caption: The Lieutenant Governor-in-Council ordered all provincial flags to be flown at half mast on public buildings for 7 days following the derailment.[119]
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