Ongoing History Daily: Death From Above 1979’s disaster song

On November 10, 1979, a freight train carrying poisonous and explosive chemicals went off the rails while trundling through Mississauga. Several tanks fill with propane burst and exploded, sending a ball of flame almost two kilometres high, a sight visible from more than a 100 km away. That was bad enough, but a ruptured chlorine tank was even worse. Chlorine is deadly and more than 200,000 people were evacuated. That was the largest peacetime evacuation in North American history until Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

I know it’s hard to make you the words, but this is the inspiration for Death From Above 1979’s song, “Trainwreck 1979.” The lyrics go: “It ran off the track, 11-79/While the immigrants slept/There wasn’t much time/The mayor came and got ‘em outta bed/They packed up their families and headed upwind.” Incredibly, no one died in the disaster.