Huge Explosion at Texas Fertilizer Plant

A massive explosion took place around 8:50pm ET at a fertilizer plant in a small town in Texas. The cause of the explosion is not precisely known, but the plant was on fire beforehand. The casualty reports are tentative and expected to rise, but two people are dead and over 150 are injured. Firefighters responding to the initial fire are unaccounted for. Over a thousand residents have been evacuated from their homes. Officials are worried about the volatility of another tank at the plant, but also about the potential damage from exposure to anhydrous ammonia. The blast was heard in Dallas, 75 miles away. "There are lots of houses that are leveled within a two-block radius. A lot of other homes are damaged as well outside that radius." A brief YouTube video shows the explosion of the plant.

Comments

20 years passed

[darkob]

Has anyone noticed that tomorrow (on April 19th) there will be 20 year since deadly siege at Waco, TX?

Re:20 years passed

[Anonymous Coward]

Which has what to do with a chemical plant 40 miles away...? Exactly...?

Re:20 years passed

[Samantha Wright]

Well, for starters, they both begin with "W"—what more evidence could you need?!

Re:20 years passed

[Pseudonym]

Every day on the calendar is an anniversary of something.

Re:20 years passed

[MichaelSmith]

Yes but this fertiliser plant seems like a poor target for people who recognise that anniversary.

Re:20 years passed

[darkob]

First, my deepest condolences to all families and friends of dead and injured in this explosion. Apparently, some facts need further clarification. April 19th is a critical date in US history, since, whereas siege at Waco, TX ended on that date probably by coincidence (ATF went in on that particular day after 50 days of siege, negotiating and waiting), it was Tim McVeigh who "comemoraded" that day (and the deadly siege) two years later by bombing federal building in Oklahoma City. To do that he used masive amounts of fertilizer as an explosive. Fertilizer itself is inert, but under certain conditions it may explode. In any case after that bombing sale of fertilizer is severly restricded and I suppose non-farmers are not even capable of obtaining big amount of it. So, if somone wants to make a huge explosion by fertilizer the only other option (apart from stealing it) is to set it on fire wherever it may be. Either some stock on some farm, or directly in some fertilizer factory. I surely hope that this explosion is caused by an accident. However it's up to authorities to determine how did this happend, and possibly why the affected area had not been evacuated after initial fire broke out.

Re:20 years passed

[Anonymous Coward]

From what i was reading there was a small fire at the plant... Fire dept called... They put it out.

Some time later it flared up again and got way out of control. fast. And the local fire dept had no idea what they were doing on such a scale... (volunteers) And were in there when it went bang.

This is a town of about 3000 people... so... yeah. middle of nowhere.

Re:20 years passed

[Phase Shifter]

Fertilizer itself is inert, but under certain conditions it may explode. In any case after that bombing sale of fertilizer is severly restricded and I suppose non-farmers are not even capable of obtaining big amount of it. So, if somone wants to make a huge explosion by fertilizer the only other option (apart from stealing it) is to set it on fire wherever it may be.

What you are saying only applies to ammonium nitrate fertilizer.

Ammonium phosphate is also commonly used as an ingredient for fertilizers, and not only won't explode--it's actually used in fire extinguishers.

Re:20 years passed

[darkob]

Thank you for your observations. Apparently we live in two different worlds. In my world there are (still) sirens and warning signs that are used in case of an emergency. In fact those sirens are turned on for testing purposes on every first saturday in month at noon. Also, I counted eleven (11) instances of a "F" word in your (anonymous) writing. I suggest that you practice that activity more. Live long and prosper.

Re:20 years passed

[tehcyder]

These conspiracy theories would be slightly more plausible if this had actually happened on the anniversary, not the day before. As it is, it's not even really a coincidence, is it?

Re:20 years passed

[MichaelSmith]

Sure but Timothy McVeigh at least intended to attack the US federal government. Most of the people killed and injured here are people who he would have regarded as peers. His intention wasn't specifically to make things go bang. He had a specific message to send and the only message I see here is about worksite safety.

Re:20 years passed

[erroneus]

Nice spin.

Objectively speaking, the Waco incident was needless as it was. 1) What was being done at the compound was not illegal and amounts to government harrassment. 2) The government tends to be quite full of itself to the point that when someone pushes back, they tend to lose control.

For another example of such, do a search on "active duty soldier illegally disarmed and arrested" and especially find the Youtube video while it's still up. A couple of cops literally claimed they were above the law and one insisted he was enforcing the will of the people and it didn't matter what the law says.

But this is rather off-topic you know?

Anyway, I watched the video -- impressive. The blast was amazingly powerful and the child, despite being scared to death, handled herself pretty well too. I think the end game on this story is that it was industrial safety gone wrong. It happens too often.

Re:20 years passed

[Vintermann]

Sure it is. But there has just been a terrorist attack in Boston which no group has taken responsibility for.

Terrorists do their stuff to send a message. If no one understands what the message is, it's a failure from their perspective. The obvious way to make people get the message, is to say what your message is.

In some subcultures, certain dates and events have special significance. Neo-nazis, for instance, have a habit of doing stuff on Hitler's or Hess' birthday. Because these days are special to them, they may either

* Suffer from the misconception that the date is special to everyone else as well, and thus people will get the message without an explicit statement, or

* Accept that the date isn't special outside the milieu, but their friends and enemies will get it. They are content sending a message to just those groups, rather than the public at large.

The Boston Marathon terrorist(s) haven't published what message they wished to send. So, they think it will be obvious to everyone, or at least their friends and enemies. That means they are probably not foreign - foreign terrorists know that we don't share their ideas of significant days, and are comparatively more eager to accept responsibility (that they're harder for the USG to track down probably is also a factor).

Now, is there an US subculture where Patriot's day, Tax day, and the Waco siege anniversary are special days? You bet there is. Could this subculture breed terrorists? It can, and it has.

It's very legitimate to draw a connection here, this is not just any day on the calendar. Even if this plant's explosion was a complete accident, it will be filled with significance to the anti-government conspiracy theorists centered on Waco. If they don't believe one of their own did it, they're probably going to think God/Fate did it. If the Boston Marathon terrorists come from this subculture, they couldn't have asked for something better. (If they don't, though - if for instance, against the odds, they're islamists - they're probably frustrated as hell at this, and will publish a manifesto or similar in the upcoming days to correct impressions).

Re:20 years passed

[isorox]

Which has what to do with a chemical plant 40 miles away...? Exactly...?

The fertilizer plant and the OP are both full of shit?

Re:20 years passed

[Vintermann]

Comments like this reminds us why you're called anonymous cowards.

Re:20 years passed

[isorox]

Every day on the calendar is an anniversary of something.

Feb 29th has fewer anniversaries than normal though

Re:20 years passed

[Hognoxious]

September 3rd 1752 wasn't the anniversary of anything.

Re: 20 years passed

[Anonymous Coward]

I graduated from high school in TX, and I know the area very well. I don't understand where your anger is coming from. This is a horrible situation, and we need to focus on what we can do to help rather than saying hateful things to each other.

Re:20 years passed

[dave420]

Terrorism is a motive, not an action. Until it has been proven that the perpetrator(s) committed their deed in order to coerce people, it's simply not terrorism - just barbaric murder.

Re:20 years passed

[Joce640k]

You're a fucking idiot.

- How long do you think it would take the emergency services in a small town in central Texas (West is a VERY fucking small town of less than 3,000 people) to evacuate everyone in the area? There's not enough fucking personnel to make door-to-door fast enough and even then stubborn fucks don't want to do what "TEH GUBMINTZERS!!!!" tell them to, even when it means they're going to get blown to shit and back.

Three words: "Emergency Broadcast System"

Re:20 years passed

[flyneye]

So, then like the Boston tea party, conducted by terrorists,
this has potential to be the Texas shit party?

Re:20 years passed

[serviscope_minor]

he's probably pretty much a hero to many Americans on slashdot. Being a religious nut [...] is just an added bonus.

What? Being religious gets someone a bonus on slashdot? Protip: you might like to try reading this website first to get a feel for the commenters first.

Re:20 years passed

[Teancum]

You make it sound like any fertilizer will work in any situation as a "one size fits all" position. That isn't how you grow plants, which needs a much more balanced approach and several different kinds of chemicals. It doesn't matter if they are produced in a factory or grown from manure in your back yard.... it is the same thing. Nitrates are one of those key ingredients that plants need in order to grow, and depending on soil conditions and the species of plant you are growing it may need those kind of fertilizers.

In fact, in earlier times people would literally sell their cess pool contents (not really septic tanks, but the same general construction) to Nitrate manufacturers for the purpose of extracting the Nitrogen compounds to be used in explosives. Cheaper ways of getting that accomplished can be had today, but in theory you could use the stuff that is flowing out of your toilet if you cared.

Re:20 years passed

[Teancum]

Three explosions on TV in three days.

We're still building up to the big one...

North Korea nuking Tokyo or Anchorage? Perhaps. It does seem nuts though.

Re:20 years passed

[serviscope_minor]

Oh great, I guess I should have previewed then!

Re:20 years passed

[egcagrac0]

Probably going to be Bitcoin.

Re:20 years passed

[Anonymous Coward]

Leave Republicans alone!

Re:20 years passed

[erroneus]

A standoff meaning the people pushed back against tyranny and harrassment. What made it a stand off was that the notion that the government players could not and would not admit defeat. Once they start down a path, they can never ever back down and that's for a lot of reasons. Not the least of which is to maintain the perception that they never lose under any circumstances. Right vs wrong and Legal vs Illegal was never going to see any discussion in a court room once the chain of events got started.

If they wanted him in a court room, they had many other opportunities to snatch him up away from his arms and his bretheren.

At the end of the day, the government's case was never made, many assertions blaming the victims have been debunked and the teeth of the ATF have been all but removed.

I'd say proof of fscking-up is well established here.

Re:20 years passed

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8r4MK3R4PI

On March 16, 2013, my son and I were hiking along country roads among pastures and fields with my 15-year old son to help him earn his hiking merit badge. I always enjoy these father/son hikes because it gives me time alone with my son. As I always do when we go on these hikes and walks, I took my trusty rifle with me as there are coyotes, wild hogs, and cougars in our area. In Texas, it is legal to openly carry a rifle or shotgun as long as you do so in a manner that isn't calculated to cause alarm. In other words, you can't walk around waving your rifle at people. I always carry my rifle slung across my chest dangling, not holding it in my hands. At about the 5 mile mark of our hike, a voice behind us asked us to stop and the officer motioned for us to approach him. He got out of his car and met us a few feet later. He asked us what we were doing and I explained that we were hiking for my son's merit badge. He then asked me what I'm doing with the rifle, to which I responded in a calm manner, "Does it matter, officer? Am I breaking the law?" At that point, the officer grabbed my rifle without warning or indication. He didn't ask for my rifle and he didn't suggest he would take it from me. He simply grabbed it. This startled me and I instantly pulled back - the rifle was attached to me - and I asked what he thought he was doing because he's not taking my rifle. He then pulled his service pistol on me and told me to take my hands off the weapon and move to his car, which I complied with. He then slammed me into the hood of his car and I remembered I had a camera on me (one of the requirements of the hiking merit badge is to document your hikes). This video is the rest of that encounter. Up to this point, I am not told why I am being stopped, why he tried to disarm me, or even that I'm under arrest. We did not set out that Saturday morning to "make a point" or cause problems. Our goal was to complete a 10-mile hike and return home without incident. My son chose a route that away from populated areas but near our home. The arresting officer is Officer Steve Ermis and the supervisor is Sergeant Minnicks of the Temple Police Department. If you agree this was a gross act of exceeded authority, please help me fight these charges: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/2nd-amendment-legal-defense-fund/x/2679348

Re:20 years passed

[rmdingler]

If your assumptions are correct, April 19th (anniversary of the Murrah explosion & the Branch Davidian fire) and April 20th (Hitler's birthday, Columbine, and possibly the date of Mohammed's birth) are coming right up. Let's hope the worst is not yet to come. As an aside, there was an ammonium nitrate explosion 10 days after 9/11 in France that was later blamed on human error, and there is such a thing as happenstance,

Re:20 years passed

[nedlohs]

Are you crazy? A huge explosion somewhere in America, that killed and wounded people. Have you not heard of the cable news channels, or something?

They need to fill 24 hours of airtime each day when on most days about 15 minutes of newsworthy shit happens. Sure they just repeat the same recorded reporting over and over but even that doesn't fill all the time. If it wasn't for the Boston bombing they'd be giving this even more press since their big name reporters wouldn't be up in Boston discussing 5 seconds of video footage for the 152nd time.

Re:20 years passed

[GLMDesigns]

David Koresh may have been a child molester but the government chose to try to arrest him in his compound instead of when he went to town. The government double-down on stupid when they created a seige; and doubled-down on stupid again when they attacked. The fault w lies with the Federal Government for unnecessarily creating a seige and attacking the compound. It wasn't necessary. It was an excessive force.

Re: 20 years passed

[wagnerrp]

The anger is towards people claiming this was a terrorist action in response to the events at Waco compound 20 years ago. Until there is some significant evidence showing otherwise, this was just a simple, catastrophic, industrial accident.

Re:20 years passed

[wagnerrp]

Are you counting Boston as two separate explosions, or was there one I missed?

Re:20 years passed

[Svartalf]

The problem with the "resisting arrest" is that he is ALLOWED that by law if the LEOs aren't operating in a legal manner- even to the point of using deadly force if needed. See the Supreme Court decision on John Bad Elk v. United States - 177 U.S. 529 (1900) for more details there.

The LEOs violated 18 USC 242 and should be decorating a jail cell awaiting trial for the FELONIES they commited, caught on video. Since we're talking a deprivation of rights involving firearms if it were enforced, they'd be facing up to 10 years in a Fed Pen.

Re:20 years passed

[ArhcAngel]

While terrorism has not been ruled out based on the ammonium nitrate in the fertilizer the plant produced it is suspected the water from the firefighter's hoses is what caused the explosion. The ammonium nitrate is handled in such as way as to keep it inert but the plant suffered a fire and ironically the water used to put out the fire is most likely what caused the ammonium nitrate to react. This video on YouTube is a guy shooting video of the fire when the explosion occurs. For reference the OK City bombing had a small fraction of the amount of ammonium nitrate this plant had stored in the one tank that exploded. Remarkably a second tank did not explode and is preventing emergency personal from approaching the site for rescue and recovery efforts.

Re:20 years passed

[Golddess]

Careful, your last name also begins with "W". You don't want people to start making a connection between this and you.

...unless this was actually a clever ploy to try and throw people off from making that connection.

Re:20 years passed

[Infiniti2000]

I'm not the AC in question, but I guess anger clouded the phrasing so as to hide the point. Let me try to rephrase to make it more palettable and contribute to the discussion.

It's impractical and infeasible to evacuate the people of the town. The people in this small town wouldn't even listen to a government mandate, let alone request, to evacuate even if one were given. The company, however, said there was zero chance of an explosion, and the people need their jobs, etc. too much to gainsay that. These sorts of factories/plants are so incredibly dangerous that this event is easily a coincidence and until evidence is shown otherwise, it should be treated as such. There's nothing here that suggests it's an act of terrorism.

I know GP is marked -1 flamebait, but the gist of the message is relevant and insightful.

Re:20 years passed

[MBGMorden]

Three words: "Emergency Broadcast System"

Almost no one is watching broadcast TV these days. The emergency broadcast system is largely pointless. Even amongst backwoods hicks, a lot of them are watching satellite or on the internet (at whatever speed they can attain where they're at) rather than watching broadcast.

Re:20 years passed

[drinkypoo]

You make it sound like any fertilizer will work in any situation as a "one size fits all" position. That isn't how you grow plants, which needs a much more balanced approach and several different kinds of chemicals.

You're right and you're wrong. In theory, you're right. You look at what the plant needs and you give it that. But in proper practice, you're wrong. You simply return the shit to the soil and the system works cyclically, if you plant guilds. It's monocultural so-called "green revolution" farming (which turns nations and indeed whole continents brown) which causes soil depletion. Most of these crops aren't even rotated any more!

In fact, in earlier times people would literally sell their cess pool contents (not really septic tanks, but the same general construction) to Nitrate manufacturers for the purpose of extracting the Nitrogen compounds to be used in explosives. Cheaper ways of getting that accomplished can be had today, but in theory you could use the stuff that is flowing out of your toilet if you cared.

We could be using AIWPS to convert our waste into fertilizer, algae as a fuel feedstock, and methane gas, while cutting our water use. Or we could use composting toilets to turn crap into soil directly without any special facilities. By adding compost to your crap and letting it sit for a year (with occasional aeration) you turn it into soil that you can lift out of the digester by hand if you choose, it's that well-cooked.

The simple fact is that we only need to produce industrial fertilizers with an explosion risk because we are engaging in inherently destructive farming practices instead of employing a cyclical system which existed before we did.

Re:20 years passed

[ozmanjusri]

It's very legitimate to draw a connection here, this is not just any day on the calendar.

No, it's a day after the SS Grandcamp did it's thing.

Re:20 years passed

[flayzernax]

Well, we all know that the rule of law has been questionable for a long while in our country. Back in 1950's if you were black you had this problem, now its just escalated to anyone without official government sanction. Thanks for sharing your story.

Re:20 years passed

[Khyber]

" I surely hope that this explosion is caused by an accident."

This is Texas, land of shit regulations. Of course it was an accident. This sort of shit happens in Texas ALL THE TIME.

Re:20 years passed

[tompaulco]

Every day on the calendar is an anniversary of something.

Yes, a fun, if somewhat maudlin, game to play is to try to guess why the flag is at half staff today. You can play it almost every day now. Perhaps they will soon introduce a quarter staff, for when things really are bad.

Re:20 years passed

[tqk]

September 3rd 1752 wasn't the anniversary of anything.

(0) infidel /home/keeling_ /usr/bin/calendar -l 0 -w 0 -t 17520903
Sep 03 Richard ``the Lionheart'' crowned king of England, 1189
Sep 03 Anniversary of the Founding of the Republic in San Marino
Sep 03 Independence Day in Qatar
Sep 03 Memorial Day in Tunisia
Sep 03 Bonne fête aux Grégoire !
Sep 03 Kriegserklärung Großbritaniens und Frankreichs an Deutschland, 1939
Sep 03 Vier-Mächte-Abkommen über Berlin, 1971
Sep 03 Hilda

Perhaps you meant that nothing worth celebrating or remembering appears to have happened on 1752-09-03?

Re:20 years passed

[Samantha Wright]

..."West," Texas, actually. The town was named West. I'm not sure what possesses people to name a town "West," and it's too early in the morning to go looking it up, but there you go.

Re:20 years passed

[Samantha Wright]

Oh no, I've been compromised!

Re:20 years passed

[jedidiah]

In other words, just lay over and take whatever the state gives you. Expand that to include any random thug because you've happily given all of your rights to the state.

Trespassing and burglary are not "percieved infractions". They are common law crimes.

As far as stupidity goes, one would hope that law enforcement professionals would meet a higher standard a random civilian or even a collection of them.

Re:20 years passed

[AuMatar]

Cable has EBS as well. I'd be shocked if satellite didn't.

Source: I was up at 1 am the other night and got to listen to the test.

Re:20 years passed

[davester666]

Yes, that siege and military assault by the FBI on helpless civilians was unimaginable.

But obviously this was part of a coordinated attack by al-Qaeda, part of the Boston multi-bomb affair.

Re: 20 years passed

[cellocgw]

This is a horrible situation, and we need to focus on what we can do to help rather than saying hateful things to each other.

I agree. Further, I fail to see why the deaths in this case should be viewed as any less (or more) tragic than the deaths in the Boston bombings. Both occurred due to a failure of some sort of safety system. Quite possibly both are essentially 3-sigma events which cannot ever be completely eliminated.

Re:20 years passed

[desdinova 216]

I thought Fox "news" blamed everything on President Obama.

Re:20 years passed

[clonehappy]

Hmmm, very interesting point. Let's say, however, that I wanted to frame a particular group of people or a subculture, such as Waco sympathizers, anti-government or anti-tax groups, pro-gun folks, you know the types. If I wanted to make it look like that group of people were unstable, or needed to be "rounded-up", or were a danger to society at-large, you mean to tell me I could simply wreak havoc on a certain day or period of days and that group would take all the blame or at least be the prime suspect? Wow, I'm surprised the people who want all those things to happen to that particular group hasn't decided to blow some things up on or near the dates of those events you listed..........

Re:20 years passed

[MBGMorden]

Cable has EBS as well. I'd be shocked if satellite didn't.

Cable has EBS because its distributed from a local office (and people out in the boondocks generally don't have access to cable). Satellite is the same signal broadcast all over the country. Unless they wanted to interrupt the programming across the entire country it can't be targeted locally (except on local affiliates that one might get over satellite, though only a small fraction of people watching will be watching their local affiliates).

Re:20 years passed

[PlusFiveTroll]

Two questions...

How long does it take for an official to write up an EBS statement and get it pushed in to the proper channels.

How long from the realization that a serious fire had broken out till the explosion occurred.

The EBS works very well for weather events because of the National Weather Service coordinates with them almost daily, especially in spring. You must remember this is a *tiny* town of a few thousand people at most, not a large city with full time staff. In a small town a person with the responsibility of managing the EBS would probably be at the scene dealing with other issues.

Re:20 years passed

[lgw]

Chemical plants blow up, and if you live or work near one you know it. And no, no one is casual about smoking. While it may be trendy right now to ridicule rural folk, there's a very strong culture of safety around known risks at plants. No one fucks around, or tolerates anyone else fucking around - because chemical plants blow up, and if you live or work near one you know it.

Re:20 years passed

[mk1004]

You can make the "TEH GUBMINTZERS!!!!" argument all you want. In small towns, "the government" is made up of the townsfolk, and they tend to know each other. I'm not saying that everything in small towns is unicorns and glitter, but people are likely to heed the words of the officials that they actually know if those officials say "danger Will Robinson, danger!"

Re:20 years passed

[lgw]

If they wanted him in a court room, they had many other opportunities to snatch him up away from his arms and his bretheren.

At the end of the day, the government's case was never made, many assertions blaming the victims have been debunked and the teeth of the ATF have been all but removed.

I knew someone in the ATF in Texas at the time. He wrote a letter to his chain of command before that standoff warning of exactly what happened: that a standoff would result in many needless deaths, and you can just arrest the guy the next time he goes to the grocery store. I guess the ATF wanted to make a point that they're the big dogs and can win standoffs - in the long run they were about as wrong as it was possible to be.

Re:20 years passed

[SAU!]

They both also have exactly four letters. Clearly, it's a conspiracy.

Re:20 years passed

[Sique]

This was attempted in Spain after the Madrid Train bombing. The Partido Popular based government then tried to seize the opportunity and blamed Basque separatists for it to improve its chances at the election three days later. The Partido Popular lost the election.

Re:20 years passed

[Sique]

You're right and you're wrong. In theory, you're right. You look at what the plant needs and you give it that. But in proper practice, you're wrong. You simply return the shit to the soil and the system works cyclically, if you plant guilds. It's monocultural so-called "green revolution" farming (which turns nations and indeed whole continents brown) which causes soil depletion. Most of these crops aren't even rotated any more!

If I remember my history courses correctly, then at least in Europe, the soil depletion came long before the green revolution. In fact, the green revolution and the synthetic fertilizers were what finally helped Europe to overcome constant soil depletion.

Re:20 years passed

[arglebargle_xiv]

I bet it was that Al Kayeeda guy again. His name seems to come up whenever there's an explosion somewhere.

Re:20 years passed

[ChrisMaple]

Unless you like skiing, the only thing worth doing outside in the northern winter is to head inside. All that aggression is pent up for spring release.

Re:20 years passed

[Hognoxious]

Presumably you think it's odd that it stands alone, with nothing after it, as in ~ Hartlepool, ~chester, ~on-super- Mare? Or indeed before it, as in Haverford ~.

Re:20 years passed

[ChrisMaple]

I'm not aware of EBS being done on satellite TV, but that doesn't mean it can't be done. Satellite TV sorts out subscriptions on a per-receiver basis, including which set of local channels is used and customized weather forecasts. Customized warnings appearing on-screen no matter what channel is active is feasible.

Re:20 years passed

[ChrisMaple]

How would there have been a pitched battle if the government forces had just left? How was the murder by the government of 76 men, women, and children the best possible outcome?

Re:20 years passed

[drinkypoo]

If I remember my history courses correctly, then at least in Europe, the soil depletion came long before the green revolution. In fact, the green revolution and the synthetic fertilizers were what finally helped Europe to overcome constant soil depletion.

It's what permitted Europe to temporarily ignore the effects of soil depletion. Unfortunately, it causes still more problems. You can add to the depletion hardpan and the death of beneficial nematodes and other organisms necessary to make nutrients bioavailable to plants. Eventually, soil becomes dirt and growing crops becomes hydroponics in a soil medium.

Re:20 years passed

[AuMatar]

Appending a region code to the EBS and region checking in the receiver would easily fix this. I don't know that they do this, but it could be done trivially and I doubt that the government hasn't thought of it.

Re:20 years passed

[Samantha Wright]

A tad, but it grows on you after a while. Perhaps post-apocalyptic, we'll see some settlements named merely "Upper," "New," and "-upon-Tweed."

Re:20 years passed

[AJWM]

September 3rd 1752 wasn't the anniversary of anything.

Ah, but that's not a day on the calendar (in some countries) now is it?

Re:20 years passed

[Pseudonym]

I need to correct you on a point of history.

The Boston tea party was not carried out by terrorists. It was carried out by smugglers.

Re:20 years passed

[WGFCrafty]

Why is it always boring "the Muslims are taking over" or "technology is our end! (Though I'm an ivy league mathematician)" manifestos. Why not a manifesto inspired novella depicting your nutty pet cause. You may still be violent and deluded, but at least you will be less boring!

Re:20 years passed

[Pseudonym]

That's a fair point. My comments were mostly directed at people engaging in menological pareidolia.

(Yes, I just made that phrase up. You're welcome, Internet.)

Re:20 years passed

[Phase Shifter]

You make it sound like any fertilizer will work in any situation as a "one size fits all" position. That isn't how you grow plants, which needs a much more balanced approach and several different kinds chemicals.

I don't know where you get that conclusion from. The prior poster asserted that ALL fertilizer is explosive, and I merely pointed out that's false in the vast majority of cases. I was in fact pointing out that his "one size fits all" position was bunk.

Most fertilizers contain less than 5% nitrate nitrogen, since plants are able to utilize more than one form of nitrogen. Thus there are formulations using ammonium phosphate, ammonium sulfate, urea, biuret, etc.

Re: 20 years passed

[Samantha Wright]

Somehow, I definitely expected that.

Re:20 years passed

[flyneye]

It's a perspective thing. The revolt was carried out by terrorists. Ask yourself from whose perspective that is true

Re:20 years passed

[I. M. Bur]

I'm pretty sure they didn't celebrate the events fom 19xx in 1752!

Re:20 years passed

[cthulhu11]

Both of what? There's no antecedent to your post.

Re:20 years passed

[Samantha Wright]

...RTFAing or looking at some of the other replies might have revealed to you that the fertilizer plant was in West, Texas. I think you've just earned some kind of award.

Re:20 years passed

[Myopic]

Mod parent +5, Insightful.

The statement "What was being done at the compound was not illegal" is completely retarded as well as irrelevant. All that matters is that government agents decided to arrest someone and that person evaded arrest. In civil society we don't allow people to evade arrest. If you are innocent, tell it to a judge. You certainly aren't allowed to hole up and shoot at agents when they come to arrest you. Give me a break. People who defend the Waco cult are ridiculous.

How Tragic

[Chrisq]

Fertilizer plants are dangerous places. I am surprised that in such a sparsely populated part of Texas the plant wasn't further away from houses.

Re:How Tragic

[MichaelSmith]

I think its a bit like Bhopal, where an economy grew up around the plant.

Re:How Tragic

[thegarbz]

As always it likely would have been at the time. Then as the town expanded the plant would have been suddenly across the road. We've gone through the battles with town planners near a refinery here in Brisbane for the same reason. It's apparently prime land, yeah 500m from a 50t supply of HF acid.

Re:How Tragic

[Phase Shifter]

The cause of the explosion is not precisely known, but the plant was on fire beforehand.

Golly, do you think there's a connection?

"Explosion" can mean many things--from a pile of ammonium nitrate being detonated to failure of a tank or tube in an air compressor.

There is a world of difference between how you need to deal with an ammonium nitrate explosion ("Everything within a mile is flattened and on fire") vs rupture of an anhydrous ammonia tank ("Evacuate everyone 17 miles downwind".)

Re:How Tragic

[Mashiki]

Back when I was a kid we had a flour mill not more than two blocks from my house(about 0.1km). Within roughly 0.25km there was also a highschool and a middleschool, and a grade school around 0.15km from it. Back before we moved to the same area, there was also a fertilizer plant just down the road roughly 0.3km. Industrial plants like what I mentioned and others, it wasn't all that uncommon for houses to spring up near where people worked.

Re:How Tragic

[Vintermann]

I hear Texas isn't so cool with strict zoning laws.

Re:How Tragic

[Hognoxious]

Still, if they have the letters "fluor" in them they must be the same thing, right. Them thar chemmerculs.

I could tell from the url that it's a nutter site.

Re:How Tragic

[cbhacking]

Contrary to what Hollywood may have led you to believe, things on fire do not normally explode. They normally just produce a lot of smoke and burn down. Seriously, go watch the video... it's a big fire, but it's just burning steadily and in a not-even-remotely explosive way... until from one frame to the next it flashes so bright it washes out nearly the entire light sensor of the camera.

Yes, obviously the fire is related to the explosion, thank you Captain Obvious. The question is, what about the situation even had the potential for such an incredible explosion? Because that shit is not normal for a fire. What part of "not precisely known" are you having trouble understanding? Also, as Phase Shifter pointed out, knowing exactly what blew up and possibly also knowing why is important for proper response to the incident.

Re:How Tragic

[Joce640k]

The question is, what about the situation even had the potential for such an incredible explosion?

That'd be the fact that the massive fire was in a factory where they make explosive stuff.

Re:How Tragic

[Anonymous Coward]

GOD HATES TEXAS

Don't mess with Texas! It's not nice to pick on the retarded.

Re:How Tragic

[Teancum]

Fertilizer plants are dangerous places. I am surprised that in such a sparsely populated part of Texas the plant wasn't further away from houses.

Knowing that the facility produced a product that could be explosive (especially after the Oklahoma City bombing by Tim McVeigh), they could have and indeed should have taken some engineering steps to protect not just workers but also the surrounding town.

I happen to live somewhat near the ATK facility which used to make the solid rocket boosters for the Space Shuttle and also makes the fuel used in other solid rocket missiles used by the military. It is intentionally put out in the middle of nowhere with all kinds of safety berms and evacuation routes for the workers just in case something goes wrong. There isn't a residential house anywhere within a dozen miles of the main manufacturing building, and the only other non-company structure is a visitor's center for the location of the Trans-continental Railroad (aka the "Golden Spike Monument").

Instead, this looks like some Mom & Pop company that started on some bootstring budget and couldn't afford to put in those kind of safety features into their plant design. Making fertilizer isn't exactly a high profit business anyway, so the design of the building may have been for practical reasons as well. Still, I hope that a good engineering review of this plant will happen and help with town planners and fire safety codes for buildings of this nature in the future. Safety rules are usually created when people die, and this particular plant looks like it will be a good way to learn some lessons about what not to do. Perhaps these deaths will not be in vain.

Re:How Tragic

[Goaway]

Maybe we could drop a *real* nuclear bomb on Muska, show him what one of those is like.

Ammonium nitrate explosions can, in fact, approach small nuclear explosions in power.

Re:How Tragic

[Goaway]

No, the fertilizer is explosive.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_nitrate_disasters for examples. In particular, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_Disaster .

Re:How Tragic

[Teancum]

The question is, what about the situation even had the potential for such an incredible explosion?

That'd be the fact that the massive fire was in a factory where they make explosive stuff.

The factory didn't make explosives, it only made fertilizers. It is stuff that like many chemicals can in some situations be explosive, no doubt.

If you think this was bad, you should see some grain silo explosions. That is just a bunch of dust in a tube where unfortunately a bad spark can cause the whole silo to explode in a fashion just like was seen on the video in the link in the original story post. That isn't even something remotely connected to explosives but just ordinary grain that otherwise you would make into your next peanut butter & jelly sandwich.

Under ordinary circumstances, even a fire wouldn't be a problem for a plant like this. In fact, the fire supposedly was put out by the local fire department only to flare up again and quickly get out of hand. There should have been some safety features in that plant to help suppress the fire and there definitely could have been some different procedures put into place to prevent this explosion, but this was a situation far from normal.

Re:How Tragic

[cbraescu1]

The fertilizer explodes if on fire and reaching a specific temperature.

Re:How Tragic

[Joce640k]

The factory didn't make explosives, it only made fertilizers.

They put their output in sacks marked "fertilizer" instead of packing it into little red sticks marked "explosive"?

Apart from that, there's not much difference. The IRA used sacks of fertilizer quite effectively. All you need is a suitable detonator.

Re:How Tragic

[Joce640k]

PS: The bomb attack on the world trade center was also a fertilizer bomb. Fertilizer bombs have been extensively used by terrorists across the globe.

http://metro.co.uk/2007/04/30/the-carnage-caused-by-fertiliser-bombs-330214/

Re:How Tragic

[thegarbz]

That doesn't make the event any less tragic.

Re: How Tragic

[CGordy]

Ammonium nitrate is initially produced as an aqueous solution, and the water is then boiled off using carefully designed heat exchangers. The problem is that the resulting pure AN liquid will freeze if the temperature drops below ~170C but it decomposes increasing rapidly once the temperature rises above 200C, lower if the pH is too high or sensitising agents such as chlorides (salt) or oils are present. Decomposition can result in detonation when the AN is confined, and it's a significant hazard concern when designing or operating an ammonium nitrate plant or even just a large storage facility.

Re:How Tragic

[thegarbz]

Yes, and the suburb was Wynnum Actually the proposed suburb development was called "Wynnum North" Have a look at what is exactly north of Wynnum.

HF Alkylation is a scary process, and HF acid is psychotically hard to contain in a very wide range of possible operating scenarios.

Re:How Tragic

[Ash Vince]

Still, if they have the letters "fluor" in them they must be the same thing, right. Them thar chemmerculs.

I could tell from the url that it's a nutter site.

It's not really a nutter site. They are just against the idea of adding small amounts of fluoride to drinking water just because people can't be arsed to brush their teeth. I kind of have a bit of sympathy for this to be honest even though I personally use fluoride toothpaste (some people don't even do that). I have this strange belief that if I want to let my teeth all go to shit that is my prerogative and the local company who supply me tap water have no business trying to prevent me from doing so.

Re:How Tragic

[egcagrac0]

Many fertilizers have ingredients than burn well.

Many of those ingredients are in a powdered form.

Common flour - made out of ground up wheat - makes a huge dust explosion, and it's not particularly flammable. Flammable dusts make REALLY HUGE explosions.

Re:How Tragic

[Overzeetop]

No, it will be ignored. I once reviewed a school in West Virginia and when I was done, I told the owner that his floors were only rated for about 1/2-2/3 of what they should be for a school building. He'd built the thing himself (it was constructed much like a pole barn) and hosted underprivileged city kids for year round programs, teaching them about the outdoors. His response: "We don't have codes in WV, I just need to know that it's safe."

I told him they had basically the same code as everywhere in the US (the International Building Code), but his county simply chose not to spend any money on enforcement. I also mentioned that if anything happened to the building, he would be held personally liable - as the builder - for violating the state building code. I wished him luck and went on my way. I no longer practice engineering in WV - it's just not worth it, as it's several hundred dollars a year to keep my license up.

Building codes don't address explosions like this. Even OSHA doesn't really have much way to require safety measures that would save people if an explosion occurred. BATFE isn't involved in fertilizer (afaik), though even in a manufacturing facility BATFE regs won't save people in the process area. These people will have died and their legacy will be nothing.

Re:How Tragic

[DarkOx]

nstead, this looks like some Mom & Pop company that started on some bootstring budget and couldn't afford to put in those kind of safety features into their plant design.

Right because only a hand full of Mega-Corps should ever be allowed to do anything other than operate a retail kiosk. We all know that leads to a stable and secure economy.

I am not disagreeing with your post really. I am sure there are some lessons to be learned here and some basic safety standards that need to be put in place or improved. I just want to point out that we need to keep in mind a sense of balance. What we don't want to do is set the requirements so high they become a barrier to entry in the marketplace.

I know there is a segment of the slashdot crowd is just sure the owners were thinking "I am going maximize profits no matter what; and hey if the plant explodes fuck-it I'll declare bankruptcy and disappear." I suggest its far more likely they were doing everything they felt they reasonably could do to run a safe business that could continue to operate and provide for their future and that of their employees. While accidents like this happen they don't happen all the time so we must already be doing things mostly right.

Re:How Tragic

[LoRdTAW]

They should have been smart and made sure there were no homes, schools or other facilities near such a dangerous plant. Even if the plant was there first, why the hell would homes be built next to what amounts to an explosives plant? Its not like this didn't happen before, just google "pepcon disaster". That plant explosion blew out windows 12 miles away in Las Vegas. History repeats itself.

Re:How Tragic

[nedlohs]

When it was built it was. But people love to sprawl, and apparently don't mind living next to industrial sites prone to exploding.

Re:How Tragic

[nedlohs]

It's pretty like, however thinking it exploded because it as on fire is not "precisely" knowing the cause.

Re:How Tragic

[nedlohs]

No his using the common comparison for "big" when it comes to explosions.

Re:How Tragic

[circletimessquare]

The factory didn't make explosives, it only made fertilizers. It is stuff that like many chemicals can in some situations be explosive, no doubt.

fertilizers and explosives share a common trait:

lots of nitrogen

for the fertilizer, it's the bioavailability of nitrogen for plants that is the point

for explosives, the point is that nitrogen really, really wants to be N2 again

for explosives, AND fertilizer, when you pack a lot of nitrogen together in a chemical, and then heat it up, the nitrogen tends to figure out how to become happy N2 again, releasing a lot of energy in the process

a fertilizer factory is basically the same as an explosives factory, in regards to the existence of lots of chemical feedstock compounds containing nitrogen grumbling that it is not N2

Re:How Tragic

[denvergeek]

Been to Houston, can confirm.

Re:How Tragic

[Svartalf]

Part of what kept West going was the plant, I suspect. It's kind of like the situation in Dodge City, KS. The town's size is buoyed up by two meat packing plants, which employ nearly half the town in some manner.

Re:How Tragic

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I don't know but got that feeling from CNN this morning, that it was happily minding its own business in BFE and people built houses around it.

Re:How Tragic

[operagost]

Protesting the addition of toxins to drinking water is not the same as WANTING toxins added to one's drinking water. The overseers added fluoride to the water, and you act like the guy who wants his water as free of contaminants as possible is the crazy one. You ignored the main argument and substituted a straw man to make yours sound reasonable.

Re:How Tragic

[operagost]

Houston is an anomaly. They have no zoning, although that doesn't mean they have no ordinances. They still have regulations regarding setback, utilities, digging, etc., but no distinction between areas. The rest of Texas is not like that.

Re:How Tragic

[torsmo]

Not quite, as Bhopal was already a large city (approx. 350,000 people in 1970; plant construction completed in 1969) even before the plant was constructed.

Re:How Tragic

[Amouth]

All plants are dangerous, some more than others. But people rarely think about the "what if"s in a plant environment enough to really be safe.

Re:How Tragic

[Zorpheus]

I also think that this stuff should not explode in a fire normally. Heat alone will not make it explode, there must be high pressure too. The fertilizer might explode if it is stored in a closed metal tank, but probably not if it is stored on a pile or in sacks. This would mean that they stored it in a dangerous way.

Re:How Tragic

[ArsonSmith]

Thank you, Captain Hindsight.

Re:How Tragic

[losfromla]

Yes, at Sprouts and Trader Joes, that's where I get mine.

Re:How Tragic

[xanadu113]

Yes you can, it's called Tom's of Maine, but read the label, not all varieties are fluoride free!

Tom's of Maine Website

Re:How Tragic

[Saffaya]

I only noticed the name of the site once I made the post. However, it was the second of two different sources corroborating the event.
A quick search will provide you with confirming results.

Re:How Tragic

[alreaud]

Does 54,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate create the potential? Texas is VERY familiar with ammonium nitrate and it's destructive potential. They had a ship blow up in Texas City in 1947 that killed almost 600 people and destroyed the town. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_Disaster

It's dangerous shit that can blow up under the right conditions of detonation or fire. Which leads to the idea that the missing firefighters knew what they were getting into... Looking at the video taken by the guy with his daughter, all I can say is condolences to the families, and may they rest in peace. They passed as heroes, IMHO.

Re:How Tragic

[redneckmother]

Fluorine is a commie plot to steal our precious bodily fluids.

Yes, we must preserve our "Purity Of Essence" (or was it Peace On Earth?). Grain alcohol and branch water. We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when...

Re:How Tragic

[PlusFiveTroll]

This is a very common method of city growth in Texas. Build something annoying/dangerous way out of city limits. People build close to it for jobs,cheap land, and since it's not incorporated, easier building rules. This happened around our local airport, now the people who knowingly built by the airport are bitching that airport wants to expand because 'it will be to noisy'. WTF people.

Re:How Tragic

[iceaxe]

Good thought, but the plant was built within a short distance of the central business district of West which hasn't moved much since the town was incorporated in 1892. The plant was a bit newer than that.

Re:How Tragic

[s.petry]

Come now, it's not just Texas, and it's not new either (not that you said or implied it was "new", just clarifying my point). Pittsburgh grew up around smelters and steal mills, Detroit grew up around them too. Both of those grew out of towns that grew because of mines (salt in Detroit, coal in Pittsburgh). Living near where you work is a very sensible thing to do in most cases. It allows people to balance work and home responsibilities and still get some rest.

Safety zones are a rather new phenomon in human history, and for a lot of things we don't have them. Don't really need them in my opinion either. We'll never be able to make everything accident proof.

Re:How Tragic

[CannonballHead]

Yes, wanting "pure" water is pretty nuts. I mean, seriously, what could possibly go wrong with adding "stuff" to water? It's not like we've been wrong about stuff we add turning out to be harmful before. And, clearly, we've done long-term/human lifetime tests to make sure adding it to our water is entirely safe with no side effects. Right?

If we haven't, then it's not nuts to prefer NOT to add it. And it's definitely not nuts to prefer to have the government leave the water alone. If the government wants us to have fluoride, then try mandating that we all take fluoride daily - I'm sure that would go over well :) That's basically what they're doing, only a bit more subtly.

Re:How Tragic

[s.petry]

You have never experienced conflicting facts? If that's the case, call the rest of the world after you come out of that very small cave you hide in.

The reason these debates become so heated is because of conflicting facts. Much of the debate is weighing the merit of each sides "facts" and very little time is spent on the opinions.

Re:How Tragic

[war4peace]

Give me an easy way to REMOVE the fluoride from tap water and I'll be happy.

Re:How Tragic

[lgw]

Because safety is not and should not be mans highest goal? Plants blow up. Texans know this. They weren't blind to the risk, they chose to make other parts of their lives easier and accept the risk. Their choice. I wouldn't buy a house next door, even if I worked there and wanted the short commute, but that's my choice.

Re:How Tragic

[Algae_94]

Way to hijack the thread. Flourine in drinking water is absolutely nothing compared to HF acid. If there was a factory with large amounts of HF anywhere near my house, I'd be gone very quick. That is some of the nastiest strong acid you can spill.

Re:How Tragic

[s.petry]

I don't get your reference to what is North of Wynnum at all. Generally a "N-City North" is "North" of "N-City". "N-City South" would be "South" of "N-City". Can you extrapolate your point a bit and why it links to what is North of Wynnum?

Not being an ass, simply confused.

Re:How Tragic

[headwes]

Protesting the addition of toxins to drinking water is not the same as WANTING toxins added to one's drinking water.

Neither lead nor fluoride is a toxin

Re:How Tragic

[bored]

And, the regulations in Texas can be overridden if it poses undue financial restriction, or some BS like that. So, basically the act of the zoning board refusing to promote something to some kind of retail or commercial properly is overridden by the needs of the landowner. That is why you have apartments and condos being built (literally) 15 feet away from freight lines, and gas stations being built on top of creek tributaries, etc..

The results are usually predictable. In Austin the freight train derailed and slammed into a condo that had just been completed a couple years ago (http://www.kwtx.com/home/headlines/27183369.html). Thankfully, it wasn't a bad derailment and the part of the building it struck was vacant.

But, anyway common sense and public good falls to the needs of the landowner to maximize their profits in Texas. Its not even news anymore when the legislature passes some law to ban some obscure practice some town/etc is doing to protect their residents from some corporate interest hell bent on making a buck. Damn the damage. Heck Texas even has "Tort Reform" which is code-speak for making sure that when the explosion kills a bunch of people in an apartment complex an chemical factory built to close together no one can be held liable for ignoring common sense (and getting zoning permit wavers).

Re:How Tragic

[bored]

Building codes don't address explosions like this.

No, thats a zoning problem. Something that Texas basically doesn't have. Well, I should rephrase that. Texas has a lot of zoning commissions, the problem is that they can't enforce anything. The state laws are written in a manner such that the landowners can request zoning changes, and the boards basically can't refuse.

Re:How Tragic

[geoskd]

PS: The bomb attack on the world trade center was also a fertilizer bomb. Fertilizer bombs have been extensively used by terrorists across the globe.

The world trade center bomb used about 800 Lbs of fertilizer. This refinery had 54 Thousand pounds of the stuff on site. This wasn't a small explosion. If something like this had gone off in the basement of the twin towers, the question would not have been whether the buildings would have collapsed, it would have been: How far away would they find pieces. I would be very surprised if parts of this refinery aren't found at least a county away from where the building was.

Re:How Tragic

[jbengt]

What they have, instead of zoning, is a lot of restrictive covenants attached to the real estate deeds. So you can't just up and build a fertilizer factory in your back yard, because, even if the lack of zoning laws would allow it, your deed, and the neighborhood association groups that often enforce the restrictions, wouldn't allow it. Restrictive covenants also used to be popular to prevent you from selling to Jews, blacks, and other minorities, but those restrictions have been ruled unlawful. Nowadays they can be used to prevent you from painting your house garish colors, limit the types of fences you can put up, etc.

Re:How Tragic

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a fertilizer plant. Pretty safe to say this was ammonium nitrate (aka fertilizer) and also highly explosive. Ever heard of ANFO? Probably not...

Potential for explosion? HUGE! If I lived there and I saw a fire coming up from the "plant", I would have headed in the opposite direction as quickly as possible.
Some retard took his kid in a pickup close to the plant to video the fire for us. Permanent hearing loss and a nice video is what he came away with.

Re:How Tragic

[jbengt]

I don't know about your particular case, but you'll find that a lot of farm country has no building codes for what the farmers can build. A friend of mine built a house and workshop in rural Wisconsin, and they definitely had no code to follow, "as long as it wasn't commercial or industrial".
Also, the IBC is definitely not the code used everywhere in the US. Some states, like Illinois, have their own codes. Large cities, like Chicago (separate from the state code), often have their own code (and some smaller towns, too). The Uniform Codes are still popular, especially the Uniform Plumbing Code and especially in the West. NFPA and NEC are often enforced. Most authorities promulgate amendments to the standard codes they cite, often significantly changing parts of the standard code.

Re:How Tragic

[Sique]

Conflicting facts are almost ever measurement errors or wrongly applied theories about facts. Conflicting facts are a pretty sure sign of at least one of the facts not really being a fact (and could be one of those "Well, that's odd"-moments, which according to Isaac Asimov are the most common greetings to great discoveries).

Re:How Tragic

[s.petry]

Disagree, it's more an issue of people presenting a partial set of facts which back their position, which has become extremely common. The debated issues are complex, and it's not simply facts showing one black and two white items. There are hundreds to millions of facts that need to be considered together.

If presented partial facts, of course my theories will differ from someone who has the full set or a different partial set. The same would be true with you, or anyone else.

Most often, the heated debates are trying to cycle through each set of facts and reconcile the differences.

Re:How Tragic

[thegarbz]

Wynnum is a suburb immediately south of the Caltex refinery. Parts of Wynnum are already within Caltex's major hazard zone. The new suburb proposed was was Wynnum North, basically replacing what little bit of bush and parkland is just above Wynnum with a residential development. If you look at the google maps, that bush and parkland is basically on the otherside of the road to the Caltex refinery (which may I add has had more than 1 major HF release in its history and at least one of which was fatal though that was a long time ago).

Another funny case is happening on the northside of the river. The government is proposing reclassifying half of that picture as residential. A scary thought when you see Neumans, Caltex, and BP terminals right next to each other. They clearly didn't see any pictures of the aftermath of the Buncefield explosion. It makes a mockery of the whole Industrial zoning and major hazard facility zoning system if they are just planning to house people opposite the road.

Re:How Tragic

[s.petry]

Makes better sense now, thanks for the extrapolation. I still think the geography reference of "North" would not fit, but the explanation adds clarity to the bad decisions portion of your comments.

Re:How Tragic

[ChrisMaple]

There are filters available (not the cheap ones available everywhere), and also distillation systems, that will remove most of the fluoride from tap water.

Re:How Tragic

[ChrisMaple]

With respect to fluoride in water, the tests were already done by the fact that some areas had naturally high concentrations, so all that was required was examining the residents and analyzing the data. An optimum range was established, and maintaining fluoride at the low end of that range has value. Alas, not all communities decided to add fluoride in the optimum range, and at least one community used too much, causing damage.

Re:How Tragic

[WGFCrafty]

I think its a bit like Bhopal, where an economy grew up around the plant.

Kind of. West is a small Czechoslovakian community founded in the late 19th century. Now it might have grown towards or around the plant, but it was founded far earlier. Their city has a kolache restaurant right off the highway on I35, I always stop when heading past. In fact a picture shown on one of the cable news networks showed the mushroom cloud from that parking lot. I hope the 35 casualty count I just saw on USA TODAY is wrong.

Re:How Tragic

[Pseudonym]

I don't know who voted that down, but there's a good point in there: the Westboro Baptist Church can't be in two places at once.

Re:How Tragic

[Overzeetop]

There may still be a couple of exceptions, but they're all based on the same code, and (again, with some exceptions) nearly all states have moved to statewide blanket codes. The IBC and it's variants are based on the old UBC codes mostly. They're ALL based on ASCE 7 for loads and load factors. NFPA has a competing set of codes, but I think they're mostly being unified with the I codes. NEC is identical to an NFPA number, which is referenced as the electrical code in IBC - they're all the same. States make their own exceptions and changes, but they are relatively minor.

"Farm country," again except in VERY rare cases has the exact same code as big cities - it's just not enforced. In nearly all states the state legislature makes the building code law (again, they all use a national code as a base and modify it to their liking), and it's valid statewide. In the I codes, agricultural buildings are generally exempt from code enforcement. That's why I get to go see all the barn failures in high winds. And the usually get denied by the insurance company because they're not built to any code standard. See - code standards all exist for ag buildings. They're storage, or office, or any of a dozen uses specified in ASCE 7, or a representative load can be calculated by an engineer (which is what the code says you must do BY LAW if your use doesn't fit a defined category). It's not too challenging, but it does take some time and experience. Which, translated to the non-engineer farmer, means money - and there's no money for engineering in farming until you break something enough times that you can't afford to have it fail again.

In some states - even red Virginia, a building official not enforcing the code is a misdemeanor. We still have counties around me with the same attitude as your friend's in Wisconsin, though.

Re:How Tragic

[war4peace]

See? Not an EASY way.
If I want poison in my food, I can easily add it. If I disagree with an additive already in my food, I can't do squat about it. "Don't drink tap water" is a retarded argument. How about not enrich it with crap?

Re:How Tragic

[Sique]

Partial facts don't conflict. Hypotheses based on partial facts might conflict. Predictions based on those hypotheses might conflict. But the facts themselves don't. They are just different sets of data points.

Re:How Tragic

[s.petry]

I am pretty sure you realize what you said is rubbish. Lets take a news example: Interviewer asks Sheriff "Who did it?" and Sheriff states "We don't know, could be accidental or a criminal". You read the report in a Newspaper where they show the quote "Could be criminal". Another source quotes "Could be accidental". Both are correct. The statement was conflicting. This same scenario was presented similarly yesterday with media quoting a Sheriff in Boston.

Now before you claim it's only these scenarios, use your head. Almost all heated discussions are subject to this scenario. Very little boils down to concise mathematical expressions. With math I'd agree with you but with politics, ethics, morality, etc.. is all subject to conflicting statements.

Re:How Tragic

[Ash Vince]

Nice!!! Was wondering if anyone would mention Dr Strangelove.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove

Detected by seismic network

[Anonymous Coward]

It was detected by seismic networks. Note that the most common reason for "earthquakes" at zero depth is a quarry explosion, so that's how they initially labeled it. They've since changed it to read simply "Explosion". Click the "did you feel it link" and you can see that some people felt it as if it were an earthquake. Strangely, they are north of the event. Either the waves propogated that way, or people south of the event saw the cloud and realized it was an explosion not a quake.

Re:Detected by seismic network

[Aranykai]

Well, North of Waco is many many times more populous than south of Waco, so that doesn't really surprise me.

Still, interesting that it was picked up that far away. I still cant grasp how big the bang must have been.

Re:Detected by seismic network

[torsmo]

I checked the site for other recent events, and there have a surprisingly large number of high-intensity quakes/tremors in the past week or so. Or maybe since I'm not a seismologist, this might be normal? Any thoughts?

Re:Detected by seismic network

[geoskd]

Still, interesting that it was picked up that far away. I still cant grasp how big the bang must have been.

your typical terrorist bomb (like Mcveigh, or the trade center bomber) is going to be on the order of several hundred pounds of explosives. Maybe 500 to 1000 pounds.

These idiots had 54,000 Lbs of the stuff on site, and managed to let it catch fire, and then explode. To help put that in perspective, the myth busters used 800 Lbs of high explosive and vaporized a cement truck. This explosion was at least an order of magnitude more powerful.

-=Geoskd

Coincidence?

[hcs_$reboot]

or is it related to the Boston bomb attack..?

Re:Coincidence?

[sg_oneill]

Unlikely. Factory fires (This started off as a fire) happen all the time. This one was just unfortunate enough to happen where a metric shit tonne of amonium nitrate happened to be.

Re:Coincidence?

[Hognoxious]

How much is that in imperial fuckloads?

Re:Coincidence?

[Hognoxious]

leave an impression

I see what you did there.

Re:Coincidence?

[Paperweight]

Well, since West, TX is 20 miles from Waco, and it's almost the 20th anniversary of the Waco siege of April 19th 1993, I assume that's where the antichrist will be making his appearance tomorrow.

Re:Coincidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

42

Re:Coincidence?

[Hentes]

It did cause more losses, and would make it harder to catch the attacker afterwards. If terrorists wre smart they would do sabotage instead of bombings.

Re:Coincidence?

[marsu_k]

Henceforth you are missing your geek card at least, it has now been revoked. (hint)

Re:Coincidence?

[sFurbo]

The relevant metric is not only "people killed", but also "people scared" and "amount of disruption due to people being scared". The last two are massively higher with bombings in cities or of civilian infrastructure. Places that you can sabotage is also better protected than the average intersection.

Re:Coincidence?

[The Pea!]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy

Re:Coincidence?

[VortexCortex]

[Coincidence] or is it related to the Boston bomb attack..?

Yes. Timing was Coincidental and it was related to the Boston bomb attack: While the terrorist attack in Boston will likely result in less rights for civilians, the West, TX explosion won't cause corporations to be beholden to even basic zoning restrictions; The Boston explosions were committed by a small group of terrorists with the intent to kill, and strike fear into hearts of citizens, but the West explosion were caused by a large corporation on accident, and we should be terrified of their general recklessness, but we aren't. The Boston attack, like most terrorist threats, would have been exceedingly hard to prevent (esp. without stripping away the rights of all citizens), yet most all of the West, TX explosion injuries and casualties could have been easily avoidable by requiring such plants spend the money to relocate further from the towns they cause to spring up as they get filthy fucking rich. The perpetrator(s) of the Boston explosions may be found and put to justice for their crimes, but the rich bastards who are responsible for the West, TX explosion will get a sympathetic pat on the back, and at least a tax break in losses from Uncle Sam. The terrorists wounded many in their Boston attack, but the West, TX explosion was far more lethal and devastating. People will get right fucking pissed off about the terrorist attack in Boston, but they'll exhibit a disproportionate response of only remorse for the victims of the TX explosion.

So, you see, they are inversely related.

Re:Coincidence?

[VortexCortex]

Unlikely. Factory fires (This started off as a fire) happen all the time. This one was just unfortunate enough to happen where a metric shit tonne of amonium nitrate happened to be.

This wasn't an "unfortunate" accident. This was the result pure unabashed incompetence and greed. It's not like we don't know how far to space apart caches of volatile stuff having a high energy density in order to prevent massive explosions like this. For fuck's sake, do you think even the morons who sign up for the military would put ammo reserves all in one giant pile for safe keeping? No, that's fucking stupid. Stupid and a bit less expensive, but mostly stupid. The fire was an accident, but the explosion was caused by Corporate Negligence.

Re: Coincidence?

[CGordy]

Relocate a plant because houses were built nearby? It would be far cheaper to relocate all the houses.

Re:Coincidence?

[ta_gueule]

If the terrorists were even smarter, they could act lazy, just wait for an accident to happen and claim responsibility. It's even harder to catch them, and they don't have to leave their couch. Then they can make threats, wait a little more and claim the next one.

Re: Coincidence?

[Svartalf]

Not to metion that the plant's probably part of the raison d' etre for the town and the very houses we're talking about.

Zoning restrictions are something the City typically does, not Unions, etc.- and the Town probably didn't think anything OF it.

Re:Coincidence?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence + I hate daddy syndrome.

With a straight face, people bitch about capitalism using their iPhones, then drive to McDonald's to shove Big Macs down their 250- lb. gullets.

Re:Coincidence?

[MachineShedFred]

When trashcans with pressure cookers in them explode during a public event, that's an attack.

When a fertilizer plant explodes, that's just an entry in the actuarial tables.

Re:Coincidence?

[femtobyte]

But they promised it was perfectly safe! Thanks to corporate self-reporting (since we can't spend money on pesky government inspectors for health and safety risks), this same plant had filed a report with the EPA saying they had no fire and explosion risks, in response to a slap-on-the-wrist fine for not filing a risk-management plan in 2006. What sort of commie would refuse to trust corporations to properly self-report environmental and safety issues?

Re:Coincidence?

[ColdWetDog]

No, it may just be incompetence. Although subject to revision, a reasonable scenario is fire -> fire department -> water on fire -> Ooops, shouldn't have done that - very rapid exothermic reaction AKA explosion.

Apparently there are a number of volunteer fire firefighters missing. I'm tentatively putting this together as bad training / bad luck / fog of war mistake. Some officer in the VFD should have pulled people back until they were damned sure of what they were spraying. Even underfunded, undermanned departments would do occasional walkthroughs of major problem areas in the district, would talk to the engineers, owners, foremen and come up with plans.

Of course, in the middle of an evolving incident, it's easy to ignore all that. It's the primary killer of fireman - storming in when they should have been held back. Of course, hindisight is often more accurate than forsight.

Re:Coincidence?

[Hatta]

Those individual's who are affected may sue through the courts and this will cause the company to loose money and so eventually market forces will cause company's to pay attention to safety.

Unless the rich and powerful companies in question have bribed their legislators to provide immunity to lawsuits under the guise of "tort reform". Or in jurisdictions where judges are elected, they may have heavily funded the campaigns of judges who they know value corporate profits over human life. Even if the victims of corporate crimes prevail in court the damages are going to be a small fraction of what the company earned by cutting corners, which provides no incentive at all to behave better.

It's always "tough on crime" for the poor, and "tort reform" for the rich.

Re:Coincidence?

[geoskd]

How much is that in imperial fuckloads?

That would be 5.4 IFL.

Re:Coincidence?

[ChrisMaple]

There should have been other safeties making this impossible, such as insurance companies refusing to insure and fire department applying pressure to have permits not issued or revoked. Still, if what you say is true, there's at the very least criminal negligence here.

Re:Coincidence?

[WGFCrafty]

They didn't need to move it, from what i understand they lacked essential safety and preventative requisite requirements. Some one will get charged with wanton reckless endangerment and manslaughter.

Re:Why are these stories on /.?

[Samantha Wright]

Don't blow a fuse; the answer was just in the news! Flaaaming hypocriiiites...

(To the tune of "Reading Rainbow.")

Re:Bah

[Samantha Wright]

(except yours)

I can see it now, in the CNN comments section: "wtf, what's up with all of these non-tech stories on slashdot"

Wew

[Intrepid imaginaut]

That was one big freakin explosion. The cameraman must have been at least a couple of hundred meters away and flaming debris was zipping past him almost instantly. Still it's a fertiliser plant, explosive by its very nature, no reason to think there's any connection between this and Boston. Yet.

Re:Wew

[MichaelSmith]

I am reminded of this explosion.

Re:Wew

[VortexCortex]

Everything's bigger in Texas.

Re:Wew

[nedlohs]

That he was far to close was clear from the first frame. Surely everyone knows that some types of fertilizer make for great bombs - there have been pretty famous real world examples and it's used in every tv/movie about terrorists (well aside from the ones that pretend nukes are easy to get and use).

The Oklahoma City bombing obliterated about a third of a reinforced concrete building. With fertilizer that fit into a 20ft rental truck. I would assume a fertilizer factory has significantly more fertilizer in it, though not arranged to optimize an explosion or primed with detonators/etc one would hope...

Re:Wew

[kannibal_klown]

I felt bad for the young kid in the car: scared sh!tless AND apparently lost his hearing. I imagine that is just temporary, or at least would hope.

I felt so bad for the kid, that I almost want to bite my tongue about complaining about vertical-orientation shots like that. Oh well: seriously people, take your videos in land-scape mode... learn to turn your phone 90-degrees.

Re:Wew

[nedlohs]

I'm sure he would have wound up the windows if the air smelt funny...

Re:Wew

[tqk]

I'm sure he would have wound up the windows if the air smelt funny.

Slowly choking to death from noxious fumes, or slowly bleeding to death from shards of flying glass. Pass.

Re:Why are these stories on /.?

[girlintraining]

Don't blow a fuse; the answer was just in the news!

True, but a serious disaster is an event of national interest. Even special interest websites like this one are, in addition to being news sources, are also community gathering locations. Which means, we gather here to talk about what's going on in the world. Is there profit to be made? Sure. But there's also a discussion to be had. And our view into this news event may differ from that of the popular media; For example, there are chemical engineers who read this site. They may have something to say about how this happened. Maybe the fire suppression system failed -- maybe it was even due to a computer glitch. Whether it did or didn't, I can't really say. But the point is, we have a different perspective.

Re:Why are these stories on /.?

[Anonymous Coward]

/. has to have an article about it but yet it has nothing to do with tech. Can someone care to elaborate on why that is?

/. is "news for nerds, stuff that matters". People who make this complaint always seem to forget that, this isn't just a tech website. Besides, on other sites this has sparked a lot of debate about the chemistry of what exactly caused the explosion and whether or not it was clever planning to plonk a prone-to-exploding chemical plant beside a school. If chemistry and town planning aren't nerdy topics I don't know what are.

 

More importantly, why does it just take a few hours for /. to have these kinds of news posts but yet tech related articles could be weeks behind?

That, I have no idea about.

And an Exxon refinery caught fire

[thegarbz]

Not quite on the same scale and completely lost in the news of this explosion there was a fire at Exxon in Beaumont with 12 people injured. Not a good day for Texas industry.

Re: And an Exxon refinery caught fire

[MachineShedFred]

Because clearly no Unionized facilities have every had anything unsafe happen. Nope.

Nice straw man.

Re:And an Exxon refinery caught fire

[frank_adrian314159]

Not a good day for Texas industry.

Is it ever? I mean, that would imply that anything in Lesser Texas (i.e., anything outside the confines of Austin, San Antonio, or a few other relatively small and obscure geographic pockets within the state) was good. Which generally doesn't occur.

Re: And an Exxon refinery caught fire

[ChrisMaple]

The concepts of "at-will employment" and "right-to-work" are different, and in practice neither implies the other.

Re:Why are these stories on /.?

[inasity_rules]

In this case, it has everything to do with tech. What failed on the plant's systems to cause this? Fertalizer plants are dangerous places, by nature, and (at least in my part of the world) have some hectic safety procedures and equipment up to shutting down if it looks like there is lightning anywhere near....

Was it human error? Equipment failure? We don't know, but everyone came here to speculate. So, yeah it belongs here.

Is this nerd news?

[Bearhouse]

Interesting that just the other day we were discussing here about "exploitation" of social media sites etc. to drive traffic to "tech" sites after the Boston bombs.
Here we have links to BBC, CNN & even Youtube?
I assume like many /;ers I already get my "mainstream" news from the BBC etc. Do we need this?

Re:Is this nerd news?

[tehcyder]

I think it's probably seen as "stuff that matters" because of heightened paranoia following the Boston Marathon bombings, even though there is no apparent evidence that this was deliberate.

People have also mentioned the Waco "connection" here too. I think the US psyche is in a bit of a frazzled state at the moment.

Re:Is this nerd news?

[sFurbo]

For the discussion of what could have caused it by people who know about fertilizer plants?

Re:Is this nerd news?

[WGFCrafty]

For the discussion of what could have caused it by people who know about fertilizer plants?

A rapid and uncontrolled oxidation reaction.

Fertilizer hazard underrated

[ta_gueule]

Fertilizers are extremely dangerous and should be handled with more care. A similar thing happened in my town 12 years ago. If was on 21/9/2001, so 10 days after 11/9/2001 and therefore nobody heard about it but it left some 30 people dead and a city in ruins. Look up AZF in Toulouse on the web to see what I'm talking about. They first blamed it on the terrorists and later admitted it was an industrial accident. Like in Texas, the AZF factory was build out of the town but the town grown and it found itself in the middle of it. Poor urban planning.

Re:Fertilizer hazard underrated

[MichaelSmith]

I believe in this scenario there should be a plan to abandon the site and let it burn or blow up. And obviously there should be a buffer zone around the plant, as there are around airports. No residential, just commercial land.

Re:Fertilizer hazard underrated

[ta_gueule]

Well, the explosion propagates at the speed of sound, so abandoning the site is not an option. In Toulouse, the explosion occurred when 2 chemical products entered in contact (ammonium and nitrate if I'm not mistaken) It left a crater 200 meters wide. Although the biggest damage occurred near the factory, Steel girders were found 3km away, windows blown up 20 km away and the seismic activity was recorded in Paris (800 km away)

Re:Fertilizer hazard underrated

[MichaelSmith]

In this instance a fire preceded the explosion, so the plant could have been abandoned when the fire was discovered, if there had been no immediate threat to public safety. I agree that the idea doesn't work for all cases.

Re:Fertilizer hazard underrated

[Hognoxious]

And obviously there should be a buffer zone around the plant, as there are around airports.

You've never been to Heathrow, have you[1]? I used to live so close to the runway I could see what colour undies the stewardesses were wearing.

[1] You should. I'm sure you have some mates in Shepherd's Bush ;)

Re:Fertilizer hazard underrated

[Khyber]

" And obviously there should be a buffer zone around the plant, as there are around airports."

Most airports I've been around or in are within rifle distance of a house. That's a shitty buffer zone.

In Memphis I could take a slingshot and peg every FedEx plane on the tarmac, from my porch.

Re:Fertilizer hazard underrated

[MichaelSmith]

Former workmates I suppose. The southern hemisphere part of the company is not doing so well due to the high dollar, so I am currently a free agent.

Re:Why are these stories on /.?

[Samantha Wright]

Valid—and normally I'd defend that point myself; the irony of such a recent story condemning other sites for doing the same thing, however, was just too tempting. (And many do have communities themselves, though obviously not as well-developed.)

Eerie recollection of AZF, France

[Jesrad]

This explosion appears very similar to that of the AZF chemical plant near Toulouse in France, though (thankfully) smaller in damage and victims.

Fire and ammonium nitrate deposits... like match and dynamite.

Re:Eerie recollection of AZF, France

[Z00L00K]

And there's a similarity to the Pepcon explosion too.

It was rocket fuel manufactured there but the chemical composition of it was similar. Ammonium perchlorate compared to Ammonium nitrate for the fertilizer.

Is it that we are going to see a fertilizer blowup happen every decade or so from now on because people aren't smart enough to provide sufficient safety measures?

Re:Eerie recollection of AZF, France

[tqk]

... like match and dynamite.

Not unless you're Walter Brennan ("Rio Bravo"). Dynamite sans detonator burns like wood.

Re:Eerie recollection of AZF, France

[ChrisMaple]

Dynamite consists of nitroglycerine mixed with stuff that makes it less sensitive to shock. As it ages, the nitroglycerine can seep out and degrade to compounds even more sensitive to shock. Depending on dynamite without a detonator to be safe is ... unwise.

Re:Why are these stories on /.?

[girlintraining]

Validâ"and normally I'd defend that point myself; the irony of such a recent story condemning other sites for doing the same thing, however, was just too tempting. (And many do have communities themselves, though obviously not as well-developed.)

Nobody ever said the new management doesn't regularly open their mouth and insert their foot.

Aint it weird...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bomb in boston.. Kills a couple ppl. Injures a bunch.
Country loses its fucking mind and we'll get some new 'security' laws in place etc...

Industrial explosion kills 100+ from the last i was reading.
And not one single thing will change. At all. No more industrial controls than we have now. The last time this company got fined for safety violations they paid $3,000. Nothing really.

I don't get it... If we really have a problem with the whole 'people dying' thing.. Why don't we spend some money on the things that kill the most people..

But no... We go all nuts over some gun deaths or a bombing.. Ignore the stuff mostly that kills way more.
When on the larger scale of things... At it's worst only 20,000 a year died from guns back in the 90's... It's gone WAY down since then.

And yet every year... ~40,000 people will die from aspirin overdose...

40k is alot more than 20k... Have we ever seen one bit of info or warnings about aspirin? Nope.

Drunk drivers kill ~10,000 people a year...
Hell, ~30,000 people a year die on the roads... Have we worked very hard to fix that yet?

I just don't get it... Our sense of scale is completely fucked up.

We spend TRILLIONS and take away peoples rights because 'terrorisim'. And yet in a single year more people die from aspirin than have EVER died from terrorisim in the usa....

It makes no sense.

Re:Aint it weird...

[tehcyder]

And yet every year... ~40,000 people will die from aspirin overdose...

The only cure for that is to make suicide (or extreme stupidity) illegal.

Re:Aint it weird...

[Phase Shifter]

Industrial explosion kills 100+ from the last i was reading.

You need to start thinking critically about where you get your information. At this point, there are only two confirmed dead and six missing firefighters (probably also dead, but you never know)

Re:Aint it weird...

[coastwalker]

Accidents can be designed out of industrial processes, try looking up Poka-Yoke.

Defense spending is largely dick waving and vote gathering, I'm not impressed by the utter failure of the war in Afghanistan - the place where the bad guys who took out the twin towers came from.

The illegal war on Iraq at least bought you some cheap oil which has little to do with any deliberate response to violence.

I think you need to look a bit closer at what all that "defense" is actually doing before making claims about it.

Re:Aint it weird...

[kannibal_klown]

Yeh, it's 5-15 now and it sounds like a good chunk are emergency service personnel.

Though one source says it's still early and those numbers might spike to 60-70. But that's just guessing a this point and guesses sometimes do more harm than good during a disaster

Re:Aint it weird...

[Khyber]

You should speak for yourself. More than 10 are dead and almost 200 wounded.

Including one of my friends, whose family called to tell me he died in that explosion, as he was one of the volunteer firefighters.

Re:Aint it weird...

[Joey Vegetables]

I'm very sorry for the loss of your friend. :(

Re:Aint it weird...

[Khyber]

Uh, *I* never said 100+ killed. You'd better learn how to read user names and which post is attached to them.

Oh, wait, Anonymous Coward. Probably still in middle school.

Re:Aint it weird...

[ChrisMaple]

~30,000 people a year die on the roads... Have we worked very hard to fix that yet?

That statement is just ignorant. Do some reading about automobile design, road design, driver training and licensing, etc.. There are people who spend their whole working lives on nothing but this stuff.

Re:Aint it weird...

[ChrisMaple]

The risk of accidents can be reduced, it can never be eliminated.

You need to do more detailed research into the nature of defense. During the cold war, USSR aircraft challenging US borders was a DAILY occurrence. Failing to respond would have eventually led to a shooting war. North Korea figuratively dances on land mines regularly, trying to find a weak place to exploit. Multiple bombs daily is routine for countries around Israel.

This is not a game. The US has made some bad decisions about where to fight and worse decisions about how to fight, but the failure to fight when necessary is catastrophic.

Re:Why are these stories on /.?

[lxs]

I haven't noticed that.
In Baghdad and other parts of central Asia huge bombs are set off on a weekly basis with scores of victims but Slashdot doesn't mention it. The odd bomb in the US will get a mention. Attacks in Europe or Russia only get mentioned if they are big. So it's just the spillover of regular news you'd expect from a US based site.

Wikipedia has a page of ammonium nitrate disasters

[Michael Woodhams]

Here, listing 24 previous disasters, the largest of which was also in Texas. You'd think they, of all places, would know to keep large quantities of ammonium nitrate away from population centers (or vice versa).

Scarily, some of those disasters were from when a large quantity of ammonium nitrate powder had solidified and people tried to break it up with explosives.

The news reports I'm seeing don't actually say it was an ammonium nitrate explosion in this case, although it seems a reasonable supposition.

Re:Bah

[Hentes]

Me neither, but this one is about an explosion.

crisis mapping

[richlv]

this event was about mismanaging a facility (most likely), so there is a technical angle.
also, openstreetmap volunteers are mapping that region already - give a hand :)
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=31.80806&lon=-97.09316&zoom=16&layers=M

Ya, happens all too often

[Sycraft-fu]

Quite often when you see something, even something not particularly dangerous but more annoying like an airport, that is in a populated area and say "Why the hell didn't they build it out in the middle of nowhere?" the answer is often that they did. When they built it, there was nothing around, but things grew up around it, or grew nearer and nearer to it.

You watch an area over a couple decades and it can go from "a whole lot of nothing" to "very developed".

Re:Ya, happens all too often

[Anonymous Coward]

Comment heard on a tourist plane from New York approaching Heathrow, London:

"Hey, honey, look down there. It's Windsor Castle!"
" Sure is. Gee, I wonder why they built it so close to the airport....."

Re:Ya, happens all too often

[Culture20]

Quite often when you see something, even something not particularly dangerous but more annoying like an airport, that is in a populated area and say "Why the hell didn't they build it out in the middle of nowhere?" the answer is often that they did. When they built it, there was nothing around, but things grew up around it, or grew nearer and nearer to it.

Yet, still to happen in the US Congress.

That wouldn't happen naturally, so they planned a city (D.C.) to be built for that purpose.

Re:Ya, happens all too often

[yabos]

Yes, and then you have the idiots that move close to the airport or whatever and complain about the noise. Well don't bloody well move somewhere near an airport if you don't want to hear the jets!!!

Re:Why are these stories on /.?

[Hognoxious]

Since when were tech and computers synonyms?

Chemical engineering is tech, moron.

Re:Bah

[Savage-Rabbit]

(except yours)

I can see it now, in the CNN comments section: "wtf, what's up with all of these non-tech stories on slashdot"

And the conversation might evolve something like this:
CNN Commenter A: "Wtf, what's up with all of these non-tech stories on slashdot"
CNN Commenter B: "Wtf, is Slashdot?"
CNN Commenter A: "It's a gossip forum where cellar-dwelling nerds go to whine about things when they get tired of adding to the summit of 'Tissue Mountain'."

Re:Why are these stories on /.?

[raymansean]

News for Nerds! There are other nerds than those who sling lines of code all day or design computers. Explosions are of interest to Chemical, Mechanical, Civil engineers, etc. EE's may also be interested depending on what was the ignition source.

Yay

[ThatsNotPudding]

A fertilizer plant is being built in my little burg right now.

In the middle of one of the poorest and not exactly lilly white neighborhoods, of course.

Re:Yay

[MachineShedFred]

My family descends from a family farm, where they have received notice that a flour mill is being built nearby. My question for my father was "when that thing explodes, is the farm going to get a nice insurance settlement?"

Not if... when.

Re:Yay

[PlusFiveTroll]

I'd suggest you petition that a 15-20' high dirt berm be built around the facility. That way if an disaster happens that causes an explosion it will be directed above mostly above the area around it.

Re:Why are these stories on /.?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I noticed that every time there's an explosion somewhere, /. has to have an article about it but yet it has nothing to do with tech. Can someone care to elaborate on why that is?"

It's pretty simple actually. Each time one of these stories you hate is posted, you click on it and then post a comment. Both of those actions raise counters in a database that is then interpreted as "people like this and want to see more"

So put another way, they are posted here because you told them you want more, and it's all your fault :P

Re:Why are these stories on /.?

[cyber-vandal]

The BBC has been talking about it all morning. I doubt there has been a similar level of coverage of the paper mill fire in Birmingham this morning on US TV. In fact it took a bit of time to find it on the BBC website even.

Re:Why are these stories on /.?

[SunTzuWarmaster]

I am more interested in what Slashdotters have to say on the subject than anyone else. Typically a story like this plays out as follows:
NPR/BBC - here are the unbiased details of the story
BS news - OMG Explosion! Think of the children/town/nation! The government should do something/nothing!
Slashdot - here are similar stories (ammonia nitrate-related disasters), chemical discussion, physics of the matter.

Re:Bah

[Arancaytar]

People will never agree about what constitutes news for nerds, but the following should be pretty much common ground:

* Things that go beep.
* Things that go boom.

Phone Video Up on Youtube Already

[eldavojohn]

It was detected by seismic networks. Note that the most common reason for "earthquakes" at zero depth is a quarry explosion, so that's how they initially labeled it. They've since changed it to read simply "Explosion". Click the "did you feel it link" and you can see that some people felt it as if it were an earthquake. Strangely, they are north of the event. Either the waves propogated that way, or people south of the event saw the cloud and realized it was an explosion not a quake.

Here is how it looked dangerously close (warning, the people taking this video were way too close so if you can't stomach listening to young girl in complete fear, don't watch that video all the way through) I'm guessing and hoping those people are okay being that the video is on YouTube.

Re:Phone Video Up on Youtube Already

[geoskd]

Here is how it looked dangerously close (warning, the people taking this video were way too close so if you can't stomach listening to young girl in complete fear, don't watch that video all the way through) I'm guessing and hoping those people are okay being that the video is on YouTube.

They were mostly OK. One of them got a flash burn, one got some broken ribs, otherwise they had some cuts and bruises, but survived the experience.

-=Geoskd

Re:Phone Video Up on Youtube Already

[WGFCrafty]

YouTube won't work, but if it's a little girl asking her dad to get them out of there, they are alive. Though, people shouldn't get near a burning fertilizer plant, especially with a kid. Several people thought they knew better and they have the.bits of shrapnel and many minor facial lacerations to show otherwise.

Re:Why are these stories on /.?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

This is what news organizations have been doing long before social media.

The evening of the bombing, CNN was already analyzing Obama's speech w.r.t. whether he did a good job or not. Meta-analysis.

That's fine for a politics class, but a news show?

Re:Wikipedia has a page of ammonium nitrate disast

[arielCo]

Scarily, some of those disasters were from when a large quantity of ammonium nitrate powder had solidified and people tried to break it up with explosives.

WHAT??!! Isn't it a bit like "DUH I OVERFILLED THE TANK AGAIN - I'LL JUST BURN OFF A BIT WITH A MATCH" ?

and this is news for nerds how?

[Kildjean]

I live in Texas, and while tragic and all that, why is this news in slashdot? Why is it news for nerds? Was a computer security issue that caused the explosion? If I want world news i go to CNN or huffington Post, when I come to slashdot is to read news for nerds, stuff that matters.

Re:and this is news for nerds how?

[the eric conspiracy]

Explosions are a traditional nerd interest.

When I was about 12 I used to make small amounts of explosives in my basement. Of course nowadays that would be grounds for internment, but back then we had a more reasonable society.

Re:and this is news for nerds how?

[StormyWeather]

Chemicals, Reactions, Explosions, Response to those, Causes, Effects, new technologies to stop these problems in the future being discussed?

What about this is NOT science, technology, and stuff that matters?

Re:This is nerd-worthy news?

[kannibal_klown]

I get this type of news from the mainstream outlets already.

Slashdot will sometimes post big disaster-level news. The tagline USED to read: news for nerds and stuff that matters. Large explosions like this matter, added to that being so near a supposed terrorist attack in Boston.

During 9/11 Slashdot was one of the few news sites able to handle the strain of panicked masses trying to find out info. CNN and the others went down but Slashdot was able to stay up and post news updates they were able to get about w t f was going on.

Besides: if you want to whine... it is nerd-worthy news. You're talking about chemical reactions between Fertilizer and whatever else caused it. Which intrigues the chemistry nerds and informs others since somehow some people still don't realize how volatile fertilizer is. You have the whole safety/technology issue if it turns out this was an accident, with people chiming in about the cause one its known. Etc.

Immediately before the explosion ...

[Skapare]

... there was some flame visible on the left edge of the image. I would not call this a reflection since the main fire (as seen in that video) had not exploded, yet. Some kind of trigger?

Re:Why are these stories on /.?

[MachineShedFred]

Do you really mind what happens in the world outside of US ?

Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't. In the times that I don't, I have the option, and free will, to not click the link if I don't care.

Re:Wikipedia has a page of ammonium nitrate disast

[MachineShedFred]

The problem with economic growth, is that something like a $500M fertilizer plant brings lots of jobs. The people that work those jobs don't like driving 30 miles each way to get to work, so the town that used to be at a safe distance from the half-billion dollar industrial site grows towards it. Then the thing blows up and everyone asks "Why wasn't it in the middle of nowhere?"

It probably was when it was built 20 years ago.

Was this a SCADA infrastructure attack?

[tbonefrog]

Granted, it COULD be an accident or a non-cyber insider attack.

If it was not, would there be any evidence left? Could someone out there start looking?

Are we still checking the parts for cargo containers from N. Korea, which may be radioactive and/or ticking?

Or did we get distracted by the pressure cooker bomb?

Or were we distracted by the argument over whether they could put a nuke on a missile?

Re:Why are these stories on /.?

[StormyWeather]

I'd be pretty interested in a GIGANTIC explosion in France, and I'm from Texas. Also it does have a science angle, because it's a chemical plant, and I've been interested in the discussions of how to deal with chemical fires in this thread.

So.

Fuck off, and have a nice day!

wait a minute

[slashmydots]

Fertilizer by itself doesn't tend to explode. If you have a nitrate-heavy fertilizer that's the oxygen source but if you want to make it explosive, you typically add carbon (charcoal or coal) and sulfur. I'm preeeeetty sure OSHA or whatever doesn't let those 2 be stored next to each other. So I'm really wondering how this would blow up. The last 2 major explosions I can think of were a propane storage facility and a rocket fuel manufacturing plant so those made sense. Fertilizer, not so much. They must have epically mixed up what was stored where or something.

Re:wait a minute

[DCFusor]

Ammonium nitrate can detonate all by itself. Look at the chemical formula. NH3NO3. When the nitrate breaks up, you get nitrogen (which becomes N2 with release of energy), oxygen. Ammonia is flammable, and when it breaks up, you get H - which burns with the O, and N, which becomes N2 again, also with a release of energy.
.

Sure, it's easier to make ammonium nitrate into a bomb if you add a fuel or sensitizer (see tannerite, or ANFO) but it's not required if you hit the stuff hard enough.

Insurance

[the eric conspiracy]

My father in law was an insurance inspector for Lloyds.

He inspected ships carrying guano from Chile to Europe. Guano of course is what was used prior to the Haber process being commercialized.

The need for an inspector became pretty obvious after some of these ships disappeared en route. No warning. One day everything was fine, the next no contact.

The insurance company was more worried about the ships going up in port - much more liability.

The largest industrial accident in US history was a nitrate ship explosion killing 581 people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_Disaster

Easy way to fix this (sortof)

[RobertLTux]

What you do is jigger the tables the insurance companies use so that "within Blast Zone of Industrial Building" is something they can charge a Rider for. Within a few years the problem will solve itself.

The Wit and Wisdom of the Texas Governor

[LifesABeach]

"We need to stop apologizing for celebrating life."
"We need to stop apologizing for wanting to protect an individual's right to build a business."

The difference is...

[iceaxe]

Nobody is making money off of terrorism and mass murder (except perhaps "news" outlets and businesses selling unnecessary things to frightened people?) so we can't accept that, but if someone is in business, a few corpses are just the price of getting rich. Welcome to the plutocracy.

(Note to the sarcastically challenged: I agree with the anonymous parent poster's sentiments.)

Re:Distill it yourself

[CannonballHead]

It's not a toxin. Most vegetables contain ~ .1% fluoride normally.

You mean I get it in my food anyways? So why add it to water, again?

Perhaps I should ask it this way; would you like it if the government simply required you to eat your vegetables daily "for your health?" Why not do that instead of putting it into the water?

I'm not advocating one of those "precious bodily fluids" conspiracies at all. I just think it's ridiculous. We'd be very upset if the government required us to take fluoride capsules or something, but we're okay with them just putting in the water (which most people in the city are more or less required to use, you can't just dig a well in your apartment's common area... yes, you could buy bottled water, but that's economically and environmentally pretty stupid, isn't it?)

Finally! The world will know your true identity!

[denzacar]

If one were to remove first two and the last three letters from the first word in your nick, and last two and first three from the other, your nick would show that you are actually a "man g".

A G-MAN!

And when we jumble those letters around we get SHARIAH and the international symbol for frowning/sadness - TwT.

Ha! Your days as a government/Taliban double agent provocateur/griever are coming to their well deserved end!

What's a single letter among friends?

[denzacar]

Osama... Obama...

Photos

[Taibhsear]

Here are some photos of the aftermath: http://galleries.apps.chicagotribune.com/chi-130418-fertilizer-plant-explosion-west-texas-pictures/

Re:nuclear or terrorist

[StupidSlashDotJavaSc]

Also "walla"...

It was probably a chemical reaction

[Sir Holo]

From what I've read of reports (caveat emptor), the fire started near an anhydrous ammonia tank. OK, bad, but from early reports it seems to have been worse.

Reportedly, there was a rail-car tanker full of fuming nitric acid nearby. A clear safety violation, but anyways...

Anhydrous ammonia is a strong base. It also, like any water-soluble chemical, has a certain heat of solution, in this case generating heat. So, spraying water on a fire that involves leaking anhydrous ammonia will generate more heat. Not good, but it gets worse. Apparently, from preliminary reports, there was a rail-car tanker full of fuming nitric acid nearby. That is a no-no, because fuming nitric is a strong acid. Aside from the heat of solution, strong acids react strongly with strong bases, often generating lost of heat, and gaseous byproducts such as hydrogen gas. And, oh, furthermore, fuming nitric acid is also a strong oxidizer.

To sum up this early-reported scenario, which may or may not be the full story: Anhydrous ammonia (NH3) was stored in close proximity with fuming nitric acid (HNO3). There was a fire of some sort. First-responders sprayed water onto this fire. What may have happened next was that the fire got the ammonia hot enough to possibly dissociate and produce H2, or perhaps the vessel just leaked. The heat of the fire eventually ruptured the nearby tanker car of fuming nitric acid, thus releasing it. Aside from the heat of solution, the ammonia and nitric acid could have come into contact. Strong base + strong acid = heat, hydrogen gas, and unhappy things. Add to that the strong oxidizing capability of fuming nitric acid, and you have: fuel + oxidizer + heat = BOOM.

That's just one possible chemical scenario that could have led to this tragedy.

The plant should have had very firm procedures for dealing with fires, separating reactive pairs of chemicals, and for dealing with leaks of the various chemicals that they stored in large containers. It seems, from these early reports, that they did not.

Re:Why are these stories on /.?

[geoskd]

News for Nerds! There are other nerds than those who sling lines of code all day or design computers. Explosions are of interest to Chemical, Mechanical, Civil engineers, etc. EE's may also be interested depending on what was the ignition source.

Not to mention, techies always have the best video links. I have found links to some behemoth explosions, not related to this event, just by reading the comments of other posters. Try getting that from CNN or the BBC.

Re:Why are these stories on /.?

[desdinova 216]

so, what you're saying is that his posting "why is this here" is creating a minor Streisand Effect?

Re:Finally! The world will know your true identity

[Samantha Wright]

So many competing interests! Tiiiime to chooooose...

Nice reference.

[denzacar]

I'm speechless.

Re:Nice reference.

[Samantha Wright]

I would've dug up a more subtle one if I wasn't behind on a paper today. Alas.

Well...

[denzacar]

behind on a paper today.

You're clearly not wasting enough time on Slashdot for something like that. You're barely in the "dishes need washing" category.

Wasting time on Slashdot instead of pursuing academic achievements requires a proper argument with several participants, neither side willing to yield or compromise.
With lengthy explanations and quotes and links to external sources.

Anyone can merely wait until the time runs out.
On Slashdot we weave our precious time and intellectual resources into elaborate sculptures of words which we then proudly present to the entire world.
"See this? THIS is what I actually did when I was supposed to be doing that other thing! Behold its terrible glory!"

Re:Well...

[Samantha Wright]

Admittedly, I haven't gotten into one of those... since Monday.

I am going to go out on a limb here

[wisnoskij]

And suggest that the explosion was likely caused by this aforementioned fire.

Re:Wikipedia has a page of ammonium nitrate disast

[MachineShedFred]

Except that most "urban planners" are too busy spending money to try and get people out of their cars, instead of actually planning anything urban.

Streetcars and bioswales don't prevent this.