Investigators probing an oil train derailment and explosion which has killed at least 13 people in Canada are looking into the cause of an earlier fire on the same train.
And police said they expect the death toll to reach as much as 50 after the blast destroyed dozens of buildings in the center of Lac-Megantic early on Saturday – making it the deadliest accident since 229 people were killed in a plane crash in 1998.
Local fire chief Denis Lauzon said firefighters in the nearby town of Nantes, uphill from Lac-Megantic, were called to handle a locomotive blaze on the same train a few hours before the derailment.
Joe McGonigle, Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway’s vice president of marketing, said the fire was reported after the first engineer secured the train and went to a local hotel.
“We know that one of our employees from our engineering department showed up at the same time to assist the fire department,” he said.
“Exactly what they did is being investigated so the engineer wasn’t the last man to touch that train, we know that, but we’re not sure what happened.”
Nantes Fire Chief Patrick Lambert said that when his crew intervened, the engine was shut off as per the standard operating procedure dictated by Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway. The blaze was extinguished within about 45 minutes.
“The people from MMA told us ’That’s great – the train is secure, there’s no more fire, there’s nothing anymore, there’s no more danger’” Mr Lambert told reporters.
“We were given our leave, and we left.”
The train was hauling about 50,000 barrels of crude from North Dakota’s Bakken shale formation to Irving Oil’s 300,000 barrel per day (bpd) refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick.
It rolled down the hill from Nantes to Lag-Megantic and derailed, with five of the 73 tankers exploding after coming loose.
Rescue crews are also working to contain 27,000 gallons of light crude that spilled from the tankers and made its way into nearby waterways, with fears it could flow into the St Lawrence River all the way to Quebec City.