Nasa Earth Observatory has a photograph of the recent derailment of a train of Bakken Crude burning and/or exploding in a small town in Quebec.

The death total from this event is still unknown. I believe there are about 13 known dead but several are missing and believed to have been incinerated to the point where they may not be found.

We don’t know the full story yet, but it appears that the derailment may have been caused because the break system on the train was turned off by first responders who had come to put out a small fire, and in so doing, turned off the train’s engines. The engines were idling to power the break system, necessary because the train was parked on a grade. It would appear (this is a guess so far) that the oil cars tugged down slope and detached from the engine. This track is normally used at low speeds, between 5 and 10 mph or so, but the oil cars came into town at about 30mph, derailed, smushed together and caught on fire.

We do not know if pipelines are safer than rail (or other) transport of oil and other flammable materials. My guess is that while both systems would likely have very different problems, one may well be safer than the other, and one may be more energy efficient than the other (and one would involve more labor than the other). We are starting to see arguments that since rail is more dangerous (which it may or may not be) we should therefore build the Keystone XL pipeline. But this is like saying that since trained soldiers are better at operating weapons than others, we must therefore go to war. That’s crazy talk and I hope everyone gets that.

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