On July 6, 2013, at approximately 1:14 a.m. EDT, an unattended 73-car Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway (MMA) freight train carrying Bakken Formation crude oil rolled down a 1.2% grade and derailed in downtown Lac-Mégantic, resulting in the explosion and fire of multiple tank cars. Forty-seven people were killed. More than 30 buildings in Lac-Mégantic's town centre (roughly half of the downtown area) were destroyed, and all but three of the thirty-nine remaining buildings had to be demolished due to petroleum contamination. Initial newspaper reports described a 1 km (0.6-mile) blast radius.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada identified multiple causes for the accident, principally leaving a train unattended on a main line, failure to set enough handbrakes, and lack of a backup safety mechanism.
The death toll of 47 makes this 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 previous Canadian rail accident with a higher death toll was the Beloeil train disaster in 1864, which killed 99.
The railway passing through Lac-Mégantic was owned by the United States-based Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway (MMA). The MMA had owned and operated a former Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) main line since January 2003, between Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, in the west and Brownville Junction, Maine, in the east.
The rail line through Lac-Mégantic and across Maine was built in the late 1880s as part of the final link in CPR's transcontinental system between Montreal and Saint John, New Brunswick, with the section east of Lac-Mégantic known as the International Railway of Maine. A 1970s proposal to reroute the line to bypass downtown Lac-Mégantic was never implemented because of cost. The rail line was owned by CPR until sold in segments in January 1995.
Via Rail discontinued passenger service on the route in December 1994 owing to the pending change in ownership, as Via regulations then prohibited its passenger trains from operating on tracks that were not owned by either of Canada's two national railway companies. The eastern half of the line between Brownville Junction and Saint John was sold to the industrial conglomerate J. D. Irving, which established two subsidiaries: the Eastern Maine Railway and New Brunswick Southern Railway (NBSR). The western half of the line between Brownville Junction toward Montreal was sold to Iron Road Railways (IRR), a U.S.-based company, which established a subsidiary called Canadian American Railroad.
IRR filed for bankruptcy for its subsidiary company in fall 2002. The former CPR main line from Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu to Brownville Junction was sold to Rail World Inc. in January 2003. Rail World formed the MMA as a subsidiary and engaged in aggressive cost cutting for freight train operations and continued to defer maintenance on the tracks to the point where much of the track was in marginal condition.
Transport Canada permits a railway to remain in service with as few as five solid ties and 14 damaged ties in a 12-metre (39 ft) section of track, provided trains are limited to 16 km/h (10 mph) on straight flat track. MMA failed to take advantage of millions of dollars of available federal/provincial 2:1 matching infrastructure grants under a 2007 program as track conditions on the MMA line in Quebec continued to deteriorate. By 2013, speed reductions were required on 23 portions of the line, including an 8.0 km/h (5 mph) limit at Sherbrooke yard and 16 kilometres per hour (10 mph) on an 18-kilometre (11 mi) stretch east of Magog.
The freight train, designated "MMA 2", was 1,433 m (4,701 ft) long and weighed 10,287 metric tons (10,125 long tons; 11,339 short tons). The train was composed of
MMA C30-7 No. 5017 (ex-BN) the main locomotive involved
remote-control car VB-1 (a former caboose) used to house the Locotrol equipment necessary for MMA's single-engineer train operation
CITX SD40-2 No. 3053 (ex-CP No. 5740)
CEFX SD40-2 No. 3166 (ex-UP No. 3360)
a loaded box car used as a buffer car
72 non-pressure dangerous goods DOT-111 tank cars loaded with Bakken Formation crude oil (Class 3, UN 1267). Each tank car carried 113,000 litres (25,000 imp gal; 30,000 US gal) of crude oil.
The oil, shipped by World Fuel Services subsidiary Dakota Plains Holdings, Inc., from New Town, North Dakota, originated from the Bakken Formation. The destination was the Irving Oil Refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick. Shipment of the oil was contracted to CPR, which transported it on CPR tracks from North Dakota to the CPR yard in Côte-Saint-Luc, a Montreal suburb. CPR sub-contracted MMA to transport the oil from the CPR yard in Côte-Saint-Luc to the MMA yard in Brownville Junction. CPR also sub-contracted NBSR to transport it from the MMA yard in Brownville Junction to the final destination at the Saint John refinery. Ministry of Transport senior inspector Marc Grignon opined, "When the shipper is based outside Canada, the importer becomes the shipper." Irving Oil Commercial G.P. was the shipper in this case. 3,830 rail cars of Bakken crude were shipped by 67 trains in the nine-month period preceding the derailment.
In 2009, in the United States, 69% of the tank car fleet were DOT-111 cars. In Canada, the same car (under the designation CTC-111A) represented close to 80% of the fleet. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) noted that the cars "have a high incidence of tank failures during accidents", citing in 2009 their "inadequate design" as a factor in a fatal rail collision outside Rockford, Illinois. Even before the Lac-Mégantic accident, attempts were made to require redesign or replacement of existing cars in the U.S.; these were delayed amidst fierce lobbying from rail and petroleum industry groups concerned about the cost. Since 2011, the Canadian government had required tank cars with a thicker shell, though older models were still allowed to operate.
Freight trains operated by MMA were allowed (not "permitted", see below) by regulators in Canada (Transport Canada) and the United States (Federal Railroad Administration, or FRA) to have single-person train operation (SPTO, alternately OPTO) status (one operator). The "permit" process, which requires public input, was not followed. Transport Canada and the MMA entered a negotiation process at the culmination of which, sometime before the second week of July 2012, the government allowed MMA to reduce their manpower to SPTO. An average of 80 tank cars per train was carried on the Lac-Mégantic route under the supervision of one person only. The Maine regulator had already allowed SPTO status before the first week of April 2012.