Lac-MÃ©gantic vigils to mark 1 week since derailment

Vigils for the victims of the Lac-Mégantic train disaster are expected to take place early Saturday morning across Quebec as well as in the neighbouring U.S. states of Maine and Vermont to mark one week since a runaway train derailed and exploded, claiming at least 24 lives and leaving another 26 feared dead.

Friends and loved ones of the missing and the dead had been planning to gather at the local high school in Lac-Mégantic at 1:15 a.m. ET to pay tribute to the dead and to those still recovering from the disaster. But police have since advised people to hold smaller, personal vigils instead, fearing that too many people from neighbouring towns would show up for the event.

It's the first time members of the community and other Quebec towns are coming together to mourn Lac-Mégantic's enormous collective loss after a week of evacuations, public health concerns and clean up of the debris and oil dispersed by the rail cars — the shells of which remain in the worst-hit area of town.

Vigils are planned in Montreal, Gatineau, Trois-Rivières and as far away as Manitoba, as well as in some of the U.S. states that neighbour Quebec communities. Lac-Mégantic is a town of about 6,000 people located in Quebec's Eastern Townships region near the Maine border.

Also on Friday, the Transportation Safety Board is scheduled to hold a press conference in town at 2 p.m. to update the public and the media on the federal agency's investigation into the July 6 derailment. TSB investigators have gained full access to the wreckage site and continue to search the so-called red zone, which is closed to the public, for more bodies and fresh clues to the cause of the crash.

Difficult road to normal

Shell-shocked residents of Lac-Mégantic took a small step toward normalcy on Friday after homes and businesses reopened just yards away from the lakeside town's devastated centre.

Police erected a 2.5-metre fence blocking from view what was once the downtown core of restaurants, bars and shops — but which now resembles a blackened war zone.

Bells from the town's main church, whose spire towers over the treetops in this normally quiet town in Quebec's eastern hills, could be heard ringing out for the first time since the incident as residents prepared to bring in mementos of the dead for a memorial.

"It is good to be home, even if we're near a disaster area," said Andre Gabouri, 47, as he stood on his doorstep peering over the police barricade across the street and into the warped pile of train cars.

In a testament to the intensity of the blast, which killed an estimated 50 people in Canada's worst train incident in years, the vinyl siding of nearby houses was curled outward and the leaves in the trees blackened.

Officials on Thursday said Elianne Parenteau, 93, is among the dead. She is the first of the victims to be identified.

A death toll of 50 would make the accident the worst rail crash in North America since 1989 and Canada's deadliest accident since 1998, when a Swissair jet crashed into the Atlantic off the coast of Nova Scotia, killing 229 people.

Train operator says engineer to blame

Federal investigators have said they are focusing their probe on whether the train's operator — Montreal, Maine and Atlantic railway Ltd. — followed proper safety rules. Police said they have not yet ruled out the possibility that criminal charges could be laid — possibly, the charge of criminal negligence.

Ed Burkhardt, the owner of MMA's parent company, the Chicago-based Rail World Inc., visited the town on Wednesday and said the train's engineer might not have set enough handbrakes when he parked the train and left late on July 5 in Nantes, a neighbouring town 13 kilometres up a gentle slope from Lac-Mégantic.

The train was left unattended during the scheduled shift change that occurs at that location, and while it was sitting on the tracks, a passerby reportedly spotted a fire on the train and called the fire department. Burkhardt told the media that firefighters turned off the train's engine when they arrived and that it was likely the combination of that and the inadequate number of handbrakes that set the train rolling downhill.

Quebec Premier Pauline Marois, whose government is making a $60 million aid package available to the community of about 6,000 people, said the rail company's behaviour had been "absolutely deplorable."

Guy Farrell, deputy director of the Quebec steelworkers' union, Syndicat des Métallos, said he blamed the incident largely on inadequate federal regulations to keep operators like MMA in check.

"After what we saw in Lac-Mégantic … I mean, I don't want to panic the Canadian people, but if you live near a railroad track in this country, can you really sleep peacefully at night?" he said. "For us, the important thing is that the government must tighten regulations now."

Rising oil output

The Lac-Mégantic train route was part of a vast expansion in rail shipments of crude oil throughout North America that has occurred as oil output has soared in Canada and North Dakota and pipelines have run out of space.

The July 6 derailment and resulting explosion forced a third of Lac-Mégantic's residents out of their homes as the fires burned. All but 200 have now been allowed to return home.

Megane Turcotte, 17, and her brother were woken up by the explosions early Saturday morning and found their mother, Diane Bizier, was still out.

"At first, we thought she was just somewhere where she couldn't get in touch with us," Turcotte said. "But after four, five, six hours, it started to sink in that she wasn't coming back."

Turcotte lost not only her mother but also a cousin who was a waitress at the Musi-Café and another cousin who was at the bar with her boyfriend.

Four people in total, she said flatly. In a town of 6,000, few if any have escaped the indescribable loss.

On Turcotte's smartphone is a photograph of her beaming mother, taken just last week, when Turcotte graduated from high school.

"I don't think I'm ready to take flight on my own," she said.

"I still need my mother."

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