Anne-Marie Saint-Cerny

On July 6, 2013, a train of four locomotives and 70 plus tanker cars containing highly explosive crude oil that has been obtained by fracking in North Dakota breaks free after being parked for the night in Nantes, Quebec. It picks up speed as it moves down the grade into Lac-Megantic, Quebec. The explosions and subsequent fire killed 47 people in the downtown area of the town.

The first portion of the book describes what the train engineer and his supervisors did that night to set up the ensuing disaster and why and how they were following the rules put in place by the owners of the railroads and the oil. Those rules broke safety rules in order to save money. The author follows that train day by day documenting what the trains safety inspectors did and what they report and the orders from the top to ingnore those rules to keep the train moving.

The next section of the book gives the history and background of the owners of the oil and the trains and their checker backgrounds. Then she covers the actual accident and it the terror it spread through the town.

The final section is how the municipal leaders of Lac-Megantic in conjunction with scammers and corporations fleeced the citizens of their homes and businesses.

Two Canadian politicians bear a great deal of the responsibility for the disaster- John Baird, the Canadian Minister of Transport at the time and Marc Garneau, the Minister of Transport who followed him. Neither man forced the railroads to follow proper safety rules.

A disturbing book about a railroad safety issue that is still endangering Canadians today. According to the book's cover, there are plans to turn this into a movie.… (mere)