Explosion In Texas (Not Terrorist Related)

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Gared

Gared

Gilgamesh said:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/texas-plan...mes-businesses/story?id=18984131#.UW-VXrXrwwI

Body count higher than Boston but not a terrorist attack, wonder how much coverage it'll get.
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Been watching the news on this one. Fertilizer explosions are never good, especially since it was reported that the plant had 54,000 lbs of anhydrous ammonia on hand and that a rail car of an additional 20,000 lbs was dropped off earlier today. I hope they've really managed to contain the fire and that the rumors about blowing ammonia fumes were false or they don't hit a spark.

It will be interesting to see what the damage looks like in the morning.
 
Gared

Gared

Live press conference going on now, these reporters really need to figure out the meaning of the words "we don't know yet," and "I'm not going to tell you how many people were killed, but we do have confirmation of fatalities," but it sounds like the wind is a major concern right now, blowing fumes to the south, but according to local meteorologists it sounds like at 7am local the wind is supposed to shift to the north and remain strong enough to cause problems to the north of the blast sight. Recovery efforts are being significantly slowed by the fact that responders are having to go house by house, as well as the fact that power has had to have been cut off to the area due to concerns over downed power lines and possible gas main breaks.

I swear these reporters have no concept of the phenomenon frequently referred to as "night time" and its sister condition known as "darkness."
 
Gared

Gared

I found it suitably eerie that this explosion happened 66 years to the day after a freighter full of ammonia nitrate exploded in Texas City, regardless of whether the fire that led to the explosion was intentional.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
Not terrorist related would be cool, but the timing is certainly suspect. April 19 was the Branch Davidian/Waco kerfuffle and is generally a time when attacks are more likely to happen. I know that this seems like fear-mongering, but coincidences like these are certainly worth the additional scrutiny.
 
papachronos

papachronos

Dave said:
Not terrorist related would be cool, but the timing is certainly suspect. April 19 was the Branch Davidian/Waco kerfuffle and is generally a time when attacks are more likely to happen. I know that this seems like fear-mongering, but coincidences like these are certainly worth the additional scrutiny.
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April 19 is also the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing.

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Gared

Gared

I keep waiting for the ever-iconic aerial shot to show just how much of the town was leveled by the blast, but it may take a while. I think they've got a no-fly zone around it for news choppers right now, with all of those fumes in the air.
 
Gared

Gared

Press release from a few minutes ago says 12 bodies have been recovered, sounds like they're pretty much all first responders who were at the plant when it was a fire, before it exploded. 200+ injured.
 
Sparhawk

Sparhawk

I know the numbers aren't "spectacular" in terms of what some people would consider truly horrible, but this is a small town of about 2800 people, in terms of death and injury this is almost 10% of the entire town. This also would have been much, much worse just 3 or 4 hours earlier when there would have been students and teachers at the school next door.

I heard several commentators make the stupid statement of "Why did they let the plant be built so close to the town?" Uhhh, the plant was there first and the town grew around it. They also keep bringing up that they plant received a citation in 2006, it was for not having a plan in place for certain situations, and they fixed it. But an incident 7 years ago is supposed to be the "they were operating an unsafe plant" moment for many... The media makes me very sad at times.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

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Sparhawk said:
They also keep bringing up that they plant received a citation in 2006, it was for not having a plan in place for certain situations, and they fixed it. But an incident 7 years ago is supposed to be the "they were operating an unsafe plant" moment for many... The media makes me very sad at times.
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Well, apparently they didn't fix everything... word has it now that they were storing over 1300 times as much ammonium nitrate as they were supposed to be without having to report it. For those who might not remember, ammonium nitrate is what Tim McVeigh used in Oklahoma City.
 
bhamv3

bhamv3

When the plant exploded, would the ammonium nitrate have burned up or decomposed been converted to some other substance by the explosion? Or will it have spread out all over the surrounding area?
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

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bhamv3 said:
When the plant exploded, would the ammonium nitrate have burned up or decomposed been converted to some other substance by the explosion? Or will it have spread out all over the surrounding area?
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I'm thinking it was the cause of the explosion itself. The fire burned its way into the NH4NO3 storage, and that's when there was an earth-shattering kaboom.
 
sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

bhamv3 said:
When the plant exploded, would the ammonium nitrate have burned up or decomposed been converted to some other substance by the explosion? Or will it have spread out all over the surrounding area?
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The ammonium was not all consumed. There was quite a bit that was spread around. Since it is the industrial strength version it is very dangerous. And it is the reason that a large area around the plant was off limits for several days.
 
bhamv3

bhamv3

Huh, that sucks. I mean, okay the area around the plant is really fertile now, sure that's a silver lining, but that stuff's pretty toxic. Awful situation.
 
strawman

strawman

Hey, it's more dangerous than dihydrogen monoxide, and that stuff kills thousands of people each year despite is relatively low toxicity.

Fun aside, ingesting NH4NO3 isn't nearly as dangerous as inhaling it, and that's why they were worried about it, at least some of it was pushed into the atmosphere, and you don't have to inhale a lot of it for symptoms to become worrisome, though you would have to inhale a bit before it killed you.

But it is relatively low on the toxicity scale. It's just that if inhaled it attacked your blood cells directly, prevents you from receiving oxygen, and the wrong treatment can worsen symptoms.

Incidentally it also turns your blood into the color of chocolate brown.[DOUBLEPOST=1366820405][/DOUBLEPOST]I actually think the real reason they were worried about it is that it is such a strong oxidizer that it will cause things that are normally considered nonflammable to burn. Usually nonflammable products contain chemicals (and in some cases heavy metals) that, if burned, produce very toxic gasses.

It's unlikely that they were as worried about direct contact with ammonium nitrate as they were about the combustion by products of the stuff that burned because of it. It doesn't evaporate into air, and settles out of the atmosphere readily, but the gasses and toxic by products of the other burned materials nearby can travel for miles and have significant effects when inhaled or come into contact with other organic materials, such as skin, mucus membranes, etc.
 
Gared

Gared

And this has now become a criminal investigation, after a member of the volunteer EMS force was arrested and charged with possession of an explosive device...
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
Okay, so the EMT and the actual explosion may not be related and the guy's arrest could be simply because they started looking closely at everyone and found this. Hell, he lived in a small town. When I was young we made stupid stuff that went boom. Didn't make us terrorists. So i hope that it was still an accident and this guy was just unlucky enough to like making things go boom and got caught with the material.
 
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