Train Blast Site Being Treated as Crime Scene

Police in Quebec are pursuing a painstaking, wide-ranging criminal investigation of the inferno ignited by the derailment of a runaway oil train that killed at least 15 people and left dozens missing in the burned-out ruins of a downtown district. A police inspector says terrorism has been ruled out as a cause, but an array of other possibilities remain under investigation, including criminal negligence. "This is an enormous task ahead of us," he says. "We're not at the stage of arrests."

Other officials have raised the possibility that the train was tampered with before the crash in Lac-Megantic early Saturday, and the train operator suspects firefighters who extinguished an earlier blaze on the train are to blame. Investigators are continuing a search for the missing, fearing three dozen more bodies are buried in the downtown area closest to the tracks. The derailment has raised questions about the safety of Canada's growing practice of transporting oil by train, and is sure to bolster the case for a proposed oil pipeline running from Canada across the US—a project that Canadian officials badly want. (More Lac-Megantic stories.)