When a train loaded with crude oil from North Dakota rolled away
from its night-time berth near the town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec,
no one would have predicted the scope of its devastation.
The July 2013 derailment and explosion left 47 people dead,
a town decimated and the fires took days to extinguish. Rail cars were piled up
like charred sausages from the grill scraped off a plate into the rubbish bin; the
burnt remains of a BBQ gone wrong.
Regulators and the oil industry were astonished -- crude oil was
not supposed to explode. But Lac-Megantic was only one example of American crude
oil from North Dakota doing just that.
