Oil Train Derails, Blows Up Part of Quebec Town

National Post:

The runaway train caused a series of explosions, destroying the heart of Lac-Megantic and sending spectacular fireballs dozens of metres into the sky. Up to 60 more people are believed to be missing, but authorities are refusing to give any numbers beyond the one confirmed fatality.
“The train went by at 75 miles an hour, it was going like a crazy train,” said resident Gilles Fluet, who had just called it a night and left the popular Musi-Café shortly after 1 a.m. Saturday with his two friends when he saw the freight train barrelling down the tracks that cut through town.
“The wheels were smoking, because the brakes were overheating. I said to my friends, ‘Run, because that’s not going to make the turn. It’s going to crash.’ We could see they were all tankers carrying oil.”
They ran up the street and turned the corner just before the first explosion. “It was a hot wind, a bit like a torch had hit us,” Mr. Fluet, 65, said. “The wife of the guy with me was burned on her arm and leg. She was knocked down by the explosion.”

The pictures are stunning.  Investigators haven't determined exactly how the train took off:

The president and CEO of Rail World Inc., the parent company of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway, said the train was parked uphill of Lac-Megantic before the incident.
“If brakes aren’t properly applied on a train, it’s going to run away,” Edward Burkhardt told The Canadian Press.
“But we think the brakes were properly applied on this train.”
Mr. Burkhardt, who indicated he was mystified by the disaster, said the train was parked because the engineer had finished his run.
“We’ve had a very good safety record for these 10 years,” he said of the decade-old railroad.
“Well, I think we’ve blown it here.”
The multiple blasts came over a span of several hours and wiped out some 30 buildings. Locals say that many are still unaccounted for in the town of 6,000, about 250 kilometres east of Montreal.

That is not good.  Back a number of years ago (ok, 12 years ago [Fuck! Time flies!]), a train got away from the engineer in a railyard near Toledo, and ran unattended until it got past Kenton.  Luckily, nobody got seriously hurt:

 The CSX 8888 incident, also known as the Crazy Eights incident, was an unmanned runaway CSX Transportation freight train in the U.S. state of Ohio in 2001. Locomotive #8888, an EMD SD40-2, was pulling a train of 47 cars including some loaded with hazardous chemicals, and ran uncontrolled for two hours at up to 51 miles per hour (82 km/h). It was finally halted by a railroad crew in a second locomotive, which caught the runaway and coupled to the rear car.

The train consisted of CSX #8888 and 47 freight cars, 22 of which were loaded. Two tank cars contained thousands of gallons of molten phenol, a toxic ingredient of paints, glues, and dyes that is harmful when it is inhaled, ingested, or comes into contact with the skin. Attempts to derail the train using a portable derailer failed and police shot at an emergency fuel cutoff switch, which had no effect because the button must be pressed for several seconds before the engine is starved of fuel and shuts down. A northbound freight train, Q63615, was directed onto a siding where the crew uncoupled its locomotive, #8392 (another EMD SD40-2), and waited for the runaway to pass. The locomotive's crew of two, an engineer with 31 years of service and a conductor with one year's experience, chased the runaway train and were able to couple onto the rear car. They slowed the train by applying the dynamic brakes on the chase locomotive. An EMD GP38 locomotive was prepared further down the line to couple to the front of the runaway to slow it further, if necessary. Once the runaway had slowed to 11 miles per hour, CSX trainmaster Jon Hosfeld ran alongside the train, climbed aboard, and shut down the engine. The train was stopped just southeast of Kenton, Ohio, before reaching the GP38. All the brake blocks on #8888 had been completely destroyed by the heat from being applied throughout the runaway trip. The name of the engineer who let the train slip was never made public.

We did a good bit of work in Kenton, and the city officials there were pretty worked up that day.  They were imagining something on the order of this disaster in Lac-Megantic.