#Lac-Mégantic

[nothingexistsnever]

698

[borddeleau-estrie]

[walrusmagazine]

Ten Years after Disaster, Lac-Mégantic Is a Model for a Greener Future

Rebuilding from scratch meant the Quebec community could become more sustainable than ever

Rebuilding the downtown from scratch meant that the city planners, architects, and engineers involved in the project could take the biggest step possible toward sustainability: not only constructing the microgrid but also rebuilding streets on an axis with the lake to maximize airflow, constructing wider bike paths lined with trees, installing rainwater management, and prioritizing environmental education initiatives.

Read more at thewalrus.ca.

Illustration by Jarred Briggs (jarredbriggs.com)

[clover-sky]

The coincidence that from where I was sitting, the branch's curves hug the steeple. The sunset setting the steeple ablaze. The pine branches and needles looking like plumes of smoke.

[tzifron]

After Jean-Philippe Chabot’s novel Le Chemin d’en haut, in 2021, another work placing the Irving group of companies at the centre of its concerns came out it Québec: Mégantic: Un train dans la nuit, a graphic novel written by Anne-Marie Saint-Cerny with illustrations by Christian Quesnel.

The book deals with the devastating fire caused by a transport train carrying flammable crude oil, which occurred at Lac-Mégantic in the night of July 6th, 2013. The fire killed dozens, including several subsequent suicides, and plunged an entire community into a pit of despair. This event is emblematic the negligence of the industry with respect to the oversight and maintenance of its equipment. These economies of scale are meant to satiate the financial spreadsheets of billionaires tied to the firms involved in such convoys, like those of Hunter Harrison, William Ackman and other shareholders of CP, as well as partner Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway (MMA) and its primary beneficiary Edward Burkhardt and, by extension, their client, Irving Oil. The disaster also revealed the complicity of Canadian political authorities, who allowed stacks of reports to pile up – all of which showed the deficiencies of the rail system – and the failures of the industry to regulate itself. Several federal transportation ministries, if they’d cared to, could reasonably have predicted the occurrence of such a catastrophe. Moreover, one needed not ask whether such a calamity was going to happen, but merely await notification of the date, time and location of an inevitably fatal accident.

The nuanced, sobering illustrations by Christian Quesnel confer a psychological depth and, at times, a synoptic understanding of Saint-Cerny’s argumentative positions previously articulated in 2018 in a book-length essay titled Mégantic. We owe both titles to Éditions Écosociété. The former was translated and published in English in 2020 by Talonbooks [as Mégantic: A Deadly Mix of Oil, Rail, and Avarice] and the graphic novel will appear this year with publisher Between the Lines [as A Train in the Night: The Tragedy of Lac-Mégantic]. In Quebec, the Mégantic essay was a finalist for the Publishers Prize (2019), as well as the Governor General Prize and the Pierre-Vadeboncoeur Prize (both in 2018).

In both the essay and graphic novel, the structure of the text follows the planned route of the crude oil cargo, from its extraction in North Dakota – where workers are subjected to negative effects of pollutants – up to the refinery in Saint-John controlled by Irving Oil. The route was destined for passage through the eastern townships of Quebec, including the municipality of Lac-Mégantic.

[janefondue]

Seen on a sunny Sunday

[chambej]

2023 - Parc National du Mont-Mégantic (3 de 3)

Nouveau et dernier photoreportage au SEPAQ Mégantic. / New and last photoreportage at SEPAQ Mégantic

Les photographies et une partie des textes contenus sur ce site sont la propriété intellectuelle de l’auteur, sont protégés par les lois en vigueur, lui appartiennent et ne sont pas libres de droit.Tout élément copié, reproduit, modifié, réédité, chargé, dénaturé, transmis ou distribué de quelque manière que ce soit, sous quelque support que ce soit, de façon partielle ou intégrale, sans…

[trainderailments]

2012 lac-mégantic rail disaster

[emphasisonthehomo]

Me: "I should be writing rn."

Also Me: *elbow deep in a research hole about the Lac-Mégantic train crash*

[wttt-dirus-work]

So we got wildfire in the La Verendrye Wildlife reserve....

This is our next temp

Fumée means smoke

Alertes météo grave means severe weather alert

We have a smoke alert going on, and we need firefighter from fucking Europe to help us

They had to evacuate municipalities and left the pets there (some Refuges got to them in time and put them in foster families(?) until they can go back

I know you californians/westerners are used to it, but when our last big wildfire was around 1999 in Québec province.... the last really big thing (except the floods in 2017-2019-2023) was in 2013, au Lac Mégantic (chemical train caused an explosion and so many death, that was one of our biggest tragedy)

My family are okay, we got enough lakes between us and the fire but man it's terrifying...

We'll loose so much forest... we have to let little town burn down because there's a factory of chemical close to it (they're keeping the fire away to stop that ecological catastrophe from happening)

Idk what bad things are happening for you guys, but stay safe

[nothingexistsnever]

699

[protoslacker]

Bomb Trains

On certain cold nights I can hear the steel wheels of trains sounding along the rails at the Conway Yard along the Ohio River. The Ohio River begins at Pittsburgh goes north for a while and makes a sharp turn around Monaca. Not far from Monaca is a recently opened Shell Petrochemical Complex where  fracked gas turned to ethylne.

I estimate that the Conway Yard is about midway between Pittsburgh and Monaca and the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio is a similar distance. All of it is in my neck of the woods

On the evening of Febuary 3rd there was a train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. Twenty of the cars of the fifty car train carried toxic chemicals. Five of the derailed cars carried vinyl chloride. The decision was made to make a controlled release of the vinyl chloride. A fire ensued. A piece at CCN takes an interesting angle, After a train derailment, Ohio residents are living the plot of a movie they helped make.

I first learned about the derailment in East Palestine on Tumblr at least a couple of days after the derailment. And that fact concerns me. There is significant reporting about the derailment now and much to find out and to think about.

Over the years my awareness of significant risks in rail transportation has heightened A couple of things. First in 2006 a developer grading a site for a Walmart caused a landslide which closed a highway and the Norfolk Southern rail line not too far from the Conway Yard. There is an excellent picture posted at USGS, Landslide at site of former Dixmont State Hospital, Pennsylvania. At hearing prior the development's approval there warnings about the potentials for landslides were expressed vigorusly. The closure of the rail line caused significant economic losses  by delays in shipments to cities to the East Coast.

There's a bottle neck for rail traffic around Pittsburgh, which you can glean from a railway map, here. With the production of Bakken shale oil and Canadian tar sands oil the dangers of rail disasters became widely known. Especially after  Lac-Mégantic rail disaster when term "bomb trains" became popular. Now when driving around Pittsburgh there are some places trains travel that make me shudder.  Most of usdon’t live far from rail tracks, so rail safety really is kind of important to us.

[clover-sky]

[kimsiever]

S3 E8 - Pierre Jacques

In the final episode of season 3 of the Alberta Worker Podcast, independent labour journalist Kim Siever interviews Pierre Jacques, a retired railroad worker. In probably the most emotional episode to date, we talk about Pierre leaving his hometown of Lac-Mégantic to come out west as a teenager, being homeless in British Columbia, becoming a welder, trying to find work during the 1980s…

[impossiblestrangercollectionable]

A pochi metri da casa mia stanno trivellando!

Il Comune di Gravina ha comprato il terreno in cui prima stava un vivaio, tutti dicevano che sarebbe stato fatto un parco invece il terreno è stato adibito ad una sorta di terreno abbandonato, anche pieno di rifiuti spesso vistosi come materassi e cataste di legna secca, ci hanno costruito sopra in fretta e furia un piccolo recinto su una colata di cemento a presa rapida dentro cui tengono segnali stradali e da ieri è entrata una trivella con la quale stanno facendo buchi tra i pochi alberi rimasti vivi o non tagliati barbaramente Di cosa si tratta?

Temo si tratti di lavori utili ad installare dei ripetitori, e tutto questo a circa venti metri da casa mia e da molte altre abitazioni

Questa zona é già stracolma di antenne e ripetitori di tutti i tipi, ce ne sono tre da un lato, la distanza varia dai 200 metri al chilometro scarso e poi altri ripetitori simili sul lato opposto e le antenne televisive, ma queste a più di un chilometro di distanza, per fortuna...!

A dire il vero temiamo il peggio, cioè che si tratti di ripetitori simili a quelli installati accanto alle scuole medie e la scuola materna in via San Paolo, in quel caso la totalità delle persone che vivono in questo quartiere può considerarsi morta già da adesso perché le emanazioni sono di tipo paralizzante, molto appiccicose e potenti, ma oltre a questo c'è il pericolo che questi alti pilastri possano essere fatti cadere dal forte vento che soffia in questa zona, quindi il danno potrebbe essere di diverso tipo Si tratta del terreno che i terroristi di Gravina utilizzano per avviare gli attentati, fu usato per avviare l'incidente ferroviario di Lac- Mégantic nel luglio del 2013, tra gli altri

L'altro problema che pone l'installazione di questi ripetitori é l'interferenza, cioé é fin troppo chiaro che servono a togliermi internet ma senza dare l'impressione di volermi censurare Secondo alcuni il terrorismo internazionale che per tutti questi decenni si è nascosto dentro l'antiterrorismo ha intenzione di trasformare Gravina nel proprio quartier generale ma in maniera più vistosa di quanto non abbia fatto fino ad oggi: vogliono rendere chiaro che ormai esitono solo loro perchè quelli come me sono stati uccisi (da loro)

La cosa pazzesca di tutta questa storia é che questi bastardi sono stipendiati con i nostri soldi, devo aggiugere altro?

[chambej]

2023 - Parc National du Mont-Mégantic (2 de 3)

Reportage sur le 2e sentier (Les Cimes) du Parc National de Mégantic. / Report on the 2nd trail (Les Cimes) of the Mégantic National Park.

Les photographies et une partie des textes contenus sur ce site sont la propriété intellectuelle de l’auteur, sont protégés par les lois en vigueur, lui appartiennent et ne sont pas libres de droit.Tout élément copié, reproduit, modifié, réédité, chargé, dénaturé, transmis ou distribué de quelque manière que ce soit, sous quelque support que ce soit, de façon partielle ou intégrale, sans…