Lac-Megantic still seeking clear picture in devastating train explosion

The devastation around a massive train crash in a small southern Quebec community is still too raw, too hot and too volatile to completely understand the fallout, but police say they are hoping clarity will come soon.

Five people have been confirmed dead in a weekend explosion in Lac-Megantic, where a train carrying a cargo of crude oil exploded. Forty others are still missing and another 2,000 were evacuated from the scene over the weekend.

Officials said at a Monday morning press conference that approximately 1,500 people would remain evacuated from their homes as firefighters and public safety crews monitored the situation. Police they hoped to get deeper into the impact zone to continue their search for missing residents.

"Of course there's been a lot of work that’s been done on the scene during the night and hopefully we’ll get some more areas we can search during the day," Sgt. Benoit Richard told reporters.

[ Related: Police struggle to probe Quebec blast; cause still a mystery ]

City officials said that they have been assessing the water and air quality of homes in areas of the evacuation zone and it appears to be safe, but there are still questions about soil quality it some of the areas closer to the explosion. Soil testing will continue for several days.

It is not clear exactly how the train derailment occurred. Reports suggest that the train, loaded with a cache of crude oil, reached speeds of up to 90 kilometres an hour after breaking free from a nearby station where it had been parked late Friday night.

The explosion set fire to a wide swath of the city’s downtown and continues to leak oil into the environment. The Montreal Gazette reports that the city’s lake and river have been contaminated, although it is too soon to say how serious the damage is.

[ Related: Leaking oil from Lac-Mégantic disaster affects nearby towns ]

The company Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway (MMA) said in a statement that the locomotive was shut off some time after the engineer had left for the evening, which would have released its air brakes and possibly allowed the vehicle to break free.

The statement further reads:

While the company says it has been working in conjunction with city officials throughout the disaster, Mayor Sylvain Gilbert said on Monday that she would be speaking with them later today.