Lac-Megantic residents upset after finding disaster-marked images on Google Maps

It's been almost a year since the July 6 train derailment in Lac-Megantic, Que., but the reminders for the people who live there are near-constant. As the cleanup of the disaster enters its second phase, some of Lac-Megantic's residents have discovered yet another reminder: An aerial view of the scorched earth in their town where the disaster occurred, displayed on Google Maps.

QMI Agency drew attention to the image this week, calling the image "disgusting," quoting a representative from Lac-Megantic's tourism community. Ghislain Bolduc, MNA for the Megantic riding, was also critical when talking to QMI, saying that the photo "reeked of sensationalism."

"The scene only looked like this for the two weeks following the accident," Bolduc said.

While it does serve as a painful reminder of what happened in the town, it's not unusual for Google to capture disaster-hit areas as a part of its Google Earth mapping program, documenting from satellites images of the Earth's surface.

[ Related: Real estate sales remain slow in wake of Lac-Megantic disaster ]

Normally, the images on Google Earth are updated roughly twice a month, but it only updates a small portion of the planet at a time. For each specific area of the planet, the satellite image is updated about once every three years, as this unofficial Google Earth blog post explains.

For disasters, however, Google makes an effort to update its satellite images more quickly; in an effort to help disaster response crews, Google will snap satellite images of disaster-hit regions and update them as soon as they can so the images can be used to aid in rescue and recovery efforts. You can see examples of it in this story on the Four Mile Canyon fire in Colorado in 2010.

More recently, the track left behind by a tornado that rolled through Mayflower, Arkansas was spotted using Google Earth.

QMI says they have attempted to contact Google over the last several days about the image, but have not received a response. If past images like these are any indication, however, Google will replace them in time. Shortly after the Japanese tsunami that caused major damage at the Fukushima nuclear plant, Google released before and after images showing the damage caused by the event.

Now, if you look at the same part of the map over three years later, you can see the significant repairs that have been made to the area:

It may be a matter of weeks or a matter of months, but soon the progress that Lac-Megantic has made in repairing its devastated town will be visible for the world to see, too.

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