The oil carried by a freight train that derailed and exploded in Quebec this year had been misclassified as a less dangerous type of crude, Canadian officials said Wednesday, and they urged U.S. and Canadian regulators to ensure dangerous goods are accurately labeled.
Forty-seven people were killed in the July disaster when the unattended train rolled away and derailed in the town of Lac-Megantic near the Maine border and several of its oil cars exploded. The downtown was destroyed.
The train's shipment of North Dakota oil was mislabeled as a "Group 3" flammable liquid, when it should have been given a more explosive "Group 2" classification, the Canadian transportation safety board's chief investigator, Donald Ross, said.
Comments