The last moments of Lac-Mégantic

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/lac-megantic-musi-cafe/article15656116/

by ilamont • 13 years ago

106 23 13 years ago

theglobeandmail.com

embro• 13 years ago

I live not too far from there and my thoughts are with you guys!

Stay strong!

Globz• 13 years ago

Same here! Stay strong guys! What a horrible tragedy!

pluc• 13 years ago

That is one great navigational layout.

brunoqc• 13 years ago

I remember receiving that news alert on my phone at about 1:30 am. It was surreal.

euphemize• 13 years ago

For those who haven't seen it, this is what the fire looked like, taken from an amateur cam http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRb3JHsiqfA. Horrifying...

davidy123• 13 years ago

It's a really beautiful little town in a gorgeous setting and this was a really shocking tragedy that shows how easily disasters can happen in an increasing scale industrial world.

beloch• 13 years ago

The use of railways for transporting petroleum products is booming thanks to the backlash against pipelines such as keystone and gateway. Oil companies who are fearful of incurring public outrage due to pipeline spills are only too happy to hand tanker cars over to the care of railway workers. When statistically inevitable accidents happen the oil producers can escape the blame!

The Lac-Mégantic disaster shows why we should be building more pipelines. Pipelines spill less per unit of volume shipped and usually avoid populated centers to a much greater degree than railways. They're better for the environment and safer for humans. Fossil fuels can be nasty stuff, but we currently still need them and we require the ability to move them around safely. The next time you see environmentalists protesting pipeline construction, ask them why they're not chaining themselves to their local railway tracks instead. We should do our best to avoid rolling bomb's through beautiful towns like Lac-Mégantic on a daily basis.

jschrf• 13 years ago

Thank you for altering my viewpoint on this topic. I just remembered why I read this site.

revelation2• 13 years ago

That might be penny-wise and pound foolish. Pipelines cost billions to build and they manifest our reliance on oil, which in turn costs much more lifes simply through pollution than any number of railway accidents.

trekky1700• 13 years ago

Our reliance on oil is already there, whether you're building pipelines or additional oil carrying railroad cars and running extra trains.

PuerkitoBio2• 13 years ago

It's not quite that simple. The truth is that we just don't know how to move oil safely. The sane thing to do would be to phase it out.

"The IEA (International Energy Agency) found the risk of a rail spill is six times as high as the risk of a pipeline spill, but pipelines simply spill more when they rupture."

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/05/14/pipeline-oil-spills-...

ta38383• 13 years ago

    The sane thing to do would be to phase it out.

And replace it with what? You can't phase something out until you have a replacement. (Or you could send everyone back to a 19th century standard of living.)

The last moments of Lac-Mégantic

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