Three Canadian railway workers were acquitted Friday on charges stemming from the fiery crash of a oil tanker train that killed 47 people in 2013, according to reporting by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

Jurors  in Sherbrook, Quebec, deliberated for nine days before finding three workers of the former Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway not guilty in connection with the crash that hit the small town of Lac-Megantic, according to the CBC report

Tom Harding,  the locomotive engineer; Richard Labrie, the rail traffic controller on duty; and Jean Memaitre, an operations manager, had been charged with criminal negligence after the crash, which happened after the unattended train, which had been parked for the evening and later caught fire, slipped its handbrakes after the fire was put out and careened into the town, exploding in a fireball.

The tragedy sparked intense scrutiny of the use of massive oil tanker trains to ship hydrofracked crude oil from the Bakken fields of North Dakota. Albany received much of this tanker traffic and opponents quickly pointed to the Canadian crash as evidence the trains filled with highly-flammable crude were unsafe to operate, particularly in populated areas.

According to the CBC report, some families of the victims lost in the crash supported the not guilty verdict, believing the three rail workers should not be held responsible for the incident that stemmed from lax operating standards by the railways owners, who declared bankruptcy after the accident.