While the news channels were obsessing over the plane crash in San Francisco this weekend, I was rather more concerned with the events that happened not far from the Maine border. I was forced, like I suspect many others in Maine concerned about it, to refer to foreign news services for information about the event.

Not that one should judge whether something is a tragedy or not based on the body count, but only two died in the San Francisco plane crash. At the time of this writing, five are known to have died in Lac- Megantic and there are still quite a few missing. There is the fear that many bodies will never be found. Canadian Broadcasting Company reports on the events are quite traumatic — especially the video of one of the secondary explosions — even for the most harried of news hounds.

Of course, we are have yet to learn if this was a tragic catastrophic accident or something far more sinister. I am sure we shall learn more in the coming weeks after they put out the fires and make the area safe.

It was pleasing to read in initial reports that Maine fire services had been quick to offer aid to their hard-pressed Quebec counterparts. The company that owns the railway has strong Maine connections and is no doubt doing all it can to help figure out what went wrong.

This sort of event inevitably leads to questions about the safety and viability of shipping large amounts of fuel oil via rail or road.

It also focuses the mind on the preferability of building pipelines like the one the nation is squabbling about: Keystone XL.

While both trains and pipelines have an extraordinary

ANDREW IAN DODGE is a libertarian former U.S. Senate candidate and writer who lives in Harpswell.