The last Canadian rail accident to have a higher death toll was the St-Hilaire train disaster in 1864, which killed 99. It is also the deadliest rail accident since Canada's confederation in 1867.

The death toll of 47 makes this the fourth-deadliest rail accident in Canadian history, and the deadliest involving a non-passenger train. The Transportation Safety Board of Canada identified multiple causes for the accident, principally leaving a train unattended on a main line, failure to set enough handbrakes, and lack of a backup safety mechanism.

Initial newspaper reports described a 1 km (0.6-mile) blast radius. More than thirty buildings in Lac-Mégantic's town centre (roughly half of the downtown area) were destroyed, and all but three of the thirty-nine remaining buildings had to be demolished due to petroleum contamination. EDT, when an unattended 73-car Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway (MMA) freight train carrying Bakken Formation crude oil rolled down a 1.2% grade from Nantes and derailed downtown, resulting in the explosion and fire of multiple tank cars. The Lac-Mégantic rail disaster occurred in the town of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, Canada, on July 6, 2013, at approximately 01:14 a.m. More than 30 buildings destroyed, 36 to be demolished due to contamination

Neglect, defective locomotive, poor maintenance, driver error, flawed operating procedures, weak regulatory oversight, lack of safety redundancy

Crash drive 2 tank battles unblocked