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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.
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.
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.
Don't blow a fuse; the answer was just in the news! Flaaaming hypocriiiites...
(To the tune of "Reading Rainbow.")
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Well, for starters, they both begin with "W"—what more evidence could you need?!
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Every day on the calendar is an anniversary of something.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
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.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
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.
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.
I have determined that my sig is indeterminate.
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.
How much is that in imperial fuckloads?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I see what you did there.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
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.
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.
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.
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?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
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.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
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.
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.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
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.
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).
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Which has what to do with a chemical plant 40 miles away...? Exactly...?
The fertilizer plant and the OP are both full of shit?
Every day on the calendar is an anniversary of something.
Feb 29th has fewer anniversaries than normal though
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".
Since when were tech and computers synonyms?
Chemical engineering is tech, moron.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
[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.
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.
Everything's bigger in Texas.
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.
Probably going to be Bitcoin.
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.
insert inflammatory comment here!
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.
Relocate a plant because houses were built nearby? It would be far cheaper to relocate all the houses.
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.
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
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.
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.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
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.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
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.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
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.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
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.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
My work here is dung.
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.
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.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
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.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
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?
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.