Moving to Langford may have saved Patrick Clusiault’s life.
Born and raised just outside Lac-Mégantic, Que., the 20-year-old gardener used to spend his Friday evenings on the now-destroyed main street of the town, where a runaway train of oil tankers crashed and caused a catastrophic fire.
“I would probably have been there,” Clusiault said Thursday, nearly a week after the explosion left 24 people confirmed dead and many more unaccounted for in the town of 6,000.
“I don’t realize the total impact yet,” said Clusiault, who moved here in January 2012 to be near his brother, David, who is in the military. They’re now mourning the death of their cousin and many other friends and townspeople presumed dead.
“It’s unbelievable,” Clusiault said. He was last home at Christmas, when he visited his cousin, Kathy Clusiault, 24, who lived across the street from the Musi-Café — at the centre of Saturday’s fire.
“We kind of all grew up together and were really close,” he said. When he learned from Kathy’s sister that she had not been heard from, he dropped the phone. “She said that there was no more main street. She said that her sister was missing, so I kind of just lost it.”
Clusiault described his cousin as “a fun-loving girl, always there for everybody. So easy to love and so easy for her to love people.”
On the night of the derailment, Clusiault’s brother David, who was visiting Lac-Mégantic, their sisters, brother-in-law and some cousins, had travelled 250 kilometres to Montreal to attend a Tough Mudder event — a hardcore obstacle course designed by British Special Forces.
“They were pretty much blessed to be in Montreal,” he said. His parents live in Nantes, the nearby village where the 72-car train filled with crude oil broke loose and rolled about 10 kilometres down the tracks into Lac-Mégantic.
He has spoken with his father and brother, and physically, they’re OK.
Clusiault estimates he knows 90 per cent of those who are dead and missing. His family is one of the biggest in the area.
“Everybody is so traumatized,” he said.
He worked for three years at a grocery store in Lac-Mégantic before coming to Victoria. “There’s nothing left of it,” he said. One of his former co-workers, the man’s girlfriend and their baby daughter are all missing.
He has heard that many of the townspeople can no longer sleep at night. “It’s impossible to find calm in that kind of catastrophe.”
Clusiault, who also works at an Original Joe’s restaurant, loves living in the capital region but plans to return to his hometown soon.
“I want to be part of the reconstruction of the town, of course, because I lived there all my life. That’s home to me. I’m young and I can take work and I want to help.”
