On the 10th of November, 1979, a freight train made up of numerous tankers containing hazardous
materials derailed in Mississauga, Canada.
A massive explosion was followed by a toxic gas leak, which threatened to spread towards
nearby residential areas.
The derailment would ultimately impact around 220,000 people from the local area… but
in a miraculous turn of events, would result in precisely zero deaths.
Mississauga is a city on the shores of Lake Ontario, adjacent to the state capital of
Toronto.
In the 1970s it was home to around 250,000 people.
It grew out of a number of townships and villages in the area, and its closeness to Toronto
allowed it to flourish economically.
It is a city with a thriving business sector, a diverse population, a strong community,
and plenty of civic culture.
On the evening of the 10th of November a Canada Pacific freight train entered Mississauga,
running eastbound from Windsor.
It was pulled by three diesel electric locomotives, and consisted of 106 cars, many of which were
tanker cars.
These tankers carried a range of hazardous substances, including styrene, propane, caustic
soda, and chlorine.
In charge of the train were three crewmembers.
Conductor Ted Nichol was joined by brakeman Larry Krupa and engineer Keith Pruss.
Pruss was, incidentally, Krupa’s father-in-law, and the pair often worked together on the
railway.
All was well on board the train as they entered the city, but as the train passed through
the centre of town, a wheel bearing began to overheat.
It would later emerge that this was due to the failure of a system designed to lubricate
the bearing.
The lack of lubrication caused friction, which generated heat.
As the train progressed, the bearing became hotter and hotter, to the point that it was
emitting sparks and glowing with heat.
Eventually, this accumulated heat grew so great that it burned through the wheel axle,
causing the entire wheel assembly to detach.
It pinged off, flew through the air, and landed in the yard of a nearby home.
The car it had come from – the 33rd out of 106 in the train – derailed just after
passing a busy level crossing.
The other cars behind piled into it, derailing and splaying across the tracks.
Several cars burst open, spilling their contents, some of which was flammable.
The accident caused an automatic braking system to bring the locomotives to an abrupt halt.
Brakeman Larry Krupa and engineer Keith Pruss looked back along the line and watched as
a massive fireball rose from their train, climbing to the height of a 40-storey building.
The men were aware that they were hauling dangerous cargo.
They conferred, and made a plan to move the undamaged cars away from the wreck to prevent
the fire from spreading to them.
To make this happen, Mr Krupa ran back along the line towards the conflagration and manually
unhooked a coupling.
Mr Pruss was then able to drive the remaining undamaged cars away to safety, quickly removing
a huge quantity of flammable material from the area.
At the same time, emergency services converged on the site.
It was a disaster larger in scale than many firefighters had ever dealt with before, but
none of them hesitated to tackle the blaze, even as several tankers detonated in secondary
and tertiary explosions.
Deputy fire chief Ross Kelly later said: “It was an incredible sight … (the explosion)
was like a thousand feet high by a thousand feet wide…
I will say this about the men, I am proud of them.
There was no backing down off this fire, not once.
Not one man shirked.
When you asked someone to do (something), he did it… regardless of the danger…”
As soon as conductor Ted Nichol notified firefighters that the tankers contained potentially deadly
chlorine, an evacuation was ordered.
Police cars patrolled nearby streets, waking up residents and alerting them to the danger
using loudhailers.
Foot patrols then followed, knocking on doors and ensuring that families evacuated promptly.
This initially involved only the residents closest to the site, around 6,000 people,
but this number quickly grew to 20,000 as further explosions lit up the night sky.
The scale of the evacuation would increase several more times during the next 24 hours.
Evacuees were initially taken to the Square One Mall.
However, as the weather changed and wind increased, it was decided that they should be moved further
away to the Sherway Gardens Shopping Centre, and then further away again to the International
Trade Centre.
At the same time a much larger swathe of the city was also ordered to evacuate.
By the end of the second day, firefighters were still working on the wreck.
By now almost the whole of Mississauga had been ordered to evacuate.
The mayor, Hazel McCallion, told media that the city was closed until further notice,
and advised residents that nobody aside from emergency workers should be found in the danger
zone.
By this time just under a quarter of a million people had been evacuated, in an operation
that was, at the time, the largest evacuation on American soil in peacetime.
This was no small feat, and required a great deal of careful management to avoid casualties.
Evacuees had been forced to flee, in some cases, without vital medication – so pharmacies
were opened and their stores used to fill emergency prescriptions.
People were fed, and provided with drinking water, clothes and blankets to keep them warm
at night.
The Red Cross was brought in to assist with the evacuation of nursing homes and hospitals,
and many local residents in safe neighbouring areas allowed evacuees to stay in their homes
to ease pressure on the emergency spaces available.
Local historian Matthew Wilkinson was a child at the time, and managed to sleep through
most of the evacuation.
His mother chose not to wake him, and instead simply carried him to a friend’s house.
Mr Wilkinson later described his confusion at going to bed in his home in Mississauga
and waking up at a friend’s house in Oakville.
Other residents described feeling as though war had started, a plane had crashed, or that
their city had been subject to a nuclear attack, so massive was the explosion.
At the same time, however, many also noted that the community was extremely supportive
during the evacuation, with residents going out of their way to help one another throughout.
Firefighters worked at the wreck site for several days.
At one point eight firefighters were exposed to chlorine gas, and were taken to hospital…
but with treatment all of them recovered.
By the third day the flames had been extinguished, but the presence of chlorine still posed a
significant danger.
Over the next three days, as a few residents were allowed to return home, emergency workers
successfully drained away the remaining chlorine, and made safe the other materials on site.
At last, after almost a week of intense effort, evacuated residents were allowed to return
home.
Throughout the entire process, the only injuries sustained by the civilian population had been
relatively minor.
The mayor of Mississauga sustained one of these minor injuries.
While surveying the wreckage she twisted her ankle, and had to be helped into her next
press conference.
Despite her injury, she carried on working for three days without sleep, reassuring the
population, responding to the media, and organising the return of evacuees.
Following the disaster, she served out the rest of her term as mayor, and was then re-elected
continuously until she retired when she was in her 90s.
Throughout her career she did not campaign, and refused political donations, instead asking
that her supporters donate to charity instead.
Larry Krupa, the brakeman who had voluntarily run back towards the wreck site to uncouple
the undamaged cars was recommended for the Order of Canada award for his bravery during
the disaster.
He was also inducted into the North America Railway Hall of Fame.
Thanks to his intervention, the tireless work of the emergency services, and a calm and
supportive population, the disaster and ensuing evacuation resulted in no deaths or critical
injuries.
This incredible statistic, by the way, also includes the animal population of the affected
area.
Residents who had to evacuate were unable to bring dogs, cats or other pets with them.
Over the seven days during which they were absent, arrangements were made for the Ontario
Humane Society to work with firefighters in the danger zone to feed and care for pets
that had been left behind.
The response to the disaster was so exceptional that it was used as a case study, informing
the emergency plans of other similar cities across Canada.
Now, many years later, the derailment is a vital part of the history of the town.
Although it was a destructive, frightening and upsetting experience at the time, many
residents now look back on it fondly as a time when their community was able to show
its strength and unity.