Comments on: Quebec Derailment Fire/Explosion Visible from Space

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 13:15:43 +0000

That’s not space, thought. That’s air.

By: Magpie

Magpie — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 03:09:23 +0000

“Anyway, it’s always interesting when something happens on Earth that can be seen from space. So there you go.”

You know what else is visible from space? My house. Right there on Google Maps.
😛

By: bakeca Ragusa

bakeca Ragusa — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 08:47:41 +0000

scary article

By: Eric Lund

Eric Lund — Wed, 10 Jul 2013 16:43:03 +0000

It’s also amazing how bright that fireball was. I think I can identify some of the cities to the west and south of Quebec City, including Sherbrooke and Trois-Rivieres, which are the next two largest cities in Quebec after Montreal/Laval (just off the western edge of the images) and Quebec City. The fireball appears to be brighter than Sherbrooke and Trois-Rivieres combined.

Also noteworthy is that you can see a portion of the US border. Northern Maine has a much lower population density than most adjacent regions of Quebec. The plan was presumably to send this train across Maine, which is a significantly shorter distance between Montreal and Fredericton than a route parallel to the Trans-Canada Highway. There has been intermittent talk of building an east-west motorway across Maine, for the same reason (probably on hold because border crossing delays would eat up most of the time advantage for trucks on such a route).

By: Melanie

Melanie — Wed, 10 Jul 2013 16:18:34 +0000

Amazing. I don’t suppose they have a movie version?