Inspectors find ‘areas of concern,’ close part of MMA track near rail disaster

OTTAWA – Transport Canada has ordered that no rail traffic can travel on 19 kilometres of substandard track in Quebec owned by the bankrupt rail company at the centre of the Lac-Megantic disaster.

And that’s just the worst of what the federal regulator called “a number of areas of concern” along the rail line.

Transport Canada inspected the entire 337 kilometres of track owned by the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Ltd., following the July 6 derailment and explosion that killed 47 people in Lac-Megantic.

It’s reporting track defects, clusters of defective ties, poor ballast along the roadbed and vegetation obscuring the track.

One section of track near a propane storage facility must be assessed by a professional engineer and a mitigation plan reported back to Transport Canada before “safe movement” on the rails can be allowed.

The report comes one day after the Transportation Safety Board investigating the crash found that the 72 tank cars of crude oil on the train were as volatile as gasoline and the cargo had not been properly identified for transport.