Breaking News: Major Explosion at Waco, Tx Fertilizer Plant!!!!

[00clone]

What a effed up day....some wack job is arrested for sending Ricin letters, someone was arrested (wait nevermind) for the marathon bombing, this, and I'm sitting watch after sandbagging my house for the flash flooding that we're having over here. Got close to topping my egress window wells earlier today, now it's rising again. Sandbagged them, hope I don't need the sandbagging. But...I guess it's better'n what some of those folks are dealing with and will be dealing with long after the water is gone from my place.

:no:

 

[SoapyCy]

How are there only three confirmed deaths? wasnt anyone inside the factory?

 

[Stumpy]

A few things:

1. Just because there are only a few confirmed deaths doesn't mean there aren't numerous others.
2. The area was evacuated and emergency responders were pulled away to avoid further loss of life, so there is likely no way to get an accurate determination at the time.
3. Emergency responders are likely more worried about locating, rescuing, and treating the hundreds trapped, unaccounted for, injured, and bereaved.

I feel the public and media's desire for casualty counts are a negative byproduct of the 24-hour news cycle and instant social media which detract from the real scene, which is absolutely devastating regardless of specifics. I don't mean to direct that at you specifically, mtown. I find myself getting caught up in it, too, and am ashamed to have to remind myself that we're talking about lives not numbers.

 

[SNEDDS3]

Isn't tomorrow the anniversary of the OKC bombing? No that it has anything to do with that but what a coincidence.

 

[BKLYNCyclone]

Here's to all of those that volunteer in their community fire departments. My grandfather volunteered for more than 50 years in a small town in western Iowa and was one of the responders (with my two uncles) when the big propane tank exploded in Albert City in the late nineties. By all means, this explosion in West, TX looks to be many times worse, especially because the risk of explosion was likely a lot less apparent. At least with the propane tank fire, they knew what could happen, and 2 volunteer firefighters still lost their lives. Small towns depend on these volunteer fire departments, and we have a tendency to take them for granted. In that respect, thank you to all of those that put their lives at risk and volunteer as fire fighters.

 

[CtownCyclone]

Isn't tomorrow the anniversary of the OKC bombing? No that it has anything to do with that but what a coincidence.

Also 66 years ago on the 16th, a fertilizer ship with 2300 tons of the same fertilizer blew up in Texas City.

Texas City Disaster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Coincidences...

 

[Cyclonepride]

Also 66 years ago on the 16th, a fertilizer ship with 2300 tons of the same fertilizer blew up in Texas City.

Texas City Disaster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Coincidences...

I remember watching a show on that. Devastating explosion there.

 

[cycloneworld]

CNN confirming 5-15 dead (not sure how you can confirm a range of people). After seeing the video and some of the surrounding buildings, let's hope that number stays that low.

 

[FarminCy]

Also 66 years ago on the 16th, a fertilizer ship with 2300 tons of the same fertilizer blew up in Texas City.

Texas City Disaster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Coincidences...

The ship was carrying ammonium nitrate not anhydrous ammonia. Ammonium nitrate is a dry pelletized fertilizer while NH3 is a liquid stored under pressure.

 

[Chipper]

The ship was carrying ammonium nitrate not anhydrous ammonia. Ammonium nitrate is a dry pelletized fertilizer while NH3 is a liquid stored under pressure.

You're a liquid stored under pressure.

 

[CtownCyclone]

The ship was carrying ammonium nitrate not anhydrous ammonia. Ammonium nitrate is a dry pelletized fertilizer while NH3 is a liquid stored under pressure.

It was my understanding that this plant that blew up made ammonium nitrate out of anhyrous ammonia. Maybe that was incorrect on my part.

 

[FarminCy]

It was my understanding that this plant that blew up made ammonium nitrate out of anhyrous ammonia. Maybe that was incorrect on my part.

You may be right I haven't dug into what the plant actually made, if it was a NH3, MAP, DAP, or Ammonium Nitrate plant, all of which would have NH3 on hand and the latter 3 use NH3 in the manufacturing process.

What is even scarier is that if this was an ammonium nitrate plant that is even scarier that it was right next to residential areas. Anyone who has ever toured any form of fertilizer plant knows they would not want to live anywhere near one. They are very corrosive areas. I know when I was in Florida at one of Mosaic's plants almost all the people who worked there had a car that was just for driving to work due to how corrosive the steam coming out of the process is.

 

[CtownCyclone]

You may be right I haven't dug into what the plant actually made, if it was a NH3, MAP, DAP, or Ammonium Nitrate plant, all of which would have NH3 on hand and the latter 3 use NH3 in the manufacturing process.

What is even scarier is that if this was an ammonium nitrate plant that is even scarier that it was right next to residential areas. Anyone who has ever toured any form of fertilizer plant knows they would not want to live anywhere near one. They are very corrosive areas. I know when I was in Florida at one of Mosaic's plants almost all the people who worked there had a car that was just for driving to work due to how corrosive the steam coming out of the process is.

There are a lot of places that have people living next to chemical plants. Some of them were built a long time ago and the town grew up around them. Others had company-provided living quarters right next to the plant (I used to work in a plant where the parking lot used to be people's homes, that's how close they were) and the town grew from there. The plant I work at now has purchased huge tracts of land around it with no plans to develop it in order to keep people from building close by.

 

[BigBake]

CNN confirming 5-15 dead (not sure how you can confirm a range of people). After seeing the video and some of the surrounding buildings, let's hope that number stays that low.

Well, considering it's CNN it's par for the course they would confirm a "range".

 

[TJ4CY]

You may be right I haven't dug into what the plant actually made, if it was a NH3, MAP, DAP, or Ammonium Nitrate plant, all of which would have NH3 on hand and the latter 3 use NH3 in the manufacturing process.

What is even scarier is that if this was an ammonium nitrate plant that is even scarier that it was right next to residential areas. Anyone who has ever toured any form of fertilizer plant knows they would not want to live anywhere near one. They are very corrosive areas. I know when I was in Florida at one of Mosaic's plants almost all the people who worked there had a car that was just for driving to work due to how corrosive the steam coming out of the process is.

This was a retail facility, not a manufacturing plant, from what I understand. Which makes more sense as to why it was able to be located so close to town. This does not even appear to be a significantly large facility, in comparison to many others in the midwest.

 

[cy4prez7]

This is historically one of the worst weeks in American history as far as tragedies go. Lincoln's death, Titanic, Waco, Columbine, OK City, Va Tech, DeepWater Horizon, Boston and West, Texas.

 

[FarminCy]

This was a retail facility, not a manufacturing plant, from what I understand. Which makes more sense as to why it was able to be located so close to town. This does not even appear to be a significantly large facility, in comparison to many others in the midwest.

That would make sense. The pictures make it look like not a very big location and the fact there was a tin shed in one of the fire pictures made me second guess if it was an actual manufacturing plant.

 

[cowgirl836]

This was a retail facility, not a manufacturing plant, from what I understand. Which makes more sense as to why it was able to be located so close to town. This does not even appear to be a significantly large facility, in comparison to many others in the midwest.

yeah I know all the little towns in our area had a spot where all the tanks would sit for producers to come and grab.

 

[DareDevil]

This was a retail facility, not a manufacturing plant, from what I understand. Which makes more sense as to why it was able to be located so close to town. This does not even appear to be a significantly large facility, in comparison to many others in the midwest.

I agree with this. Last night you couldn't tell from the pictures. They were just saying fertilizer plant, but today you can clearly see that this was a retail location. You can tell this by all the individual NH3 tanks which are 1000 gallon tanks and the fact that they stored grain there. Looks like a building next to their grain receiving center was on fire and hard to tell what exploded first grain bins or one of the Main NH3 tanks, but both went in that explosion. As far as I knew the dry fertilizer today will not burn, to prevent use in use of explosives, but is not to say at that high of temp it would not.

This was a plant like and Farm Services, CPS or a Coop and most of the time these are not too large and almost all of them are located in a small town or right outside of town. If this would have been an actual manufacturing fertilizer plant they would have there own fire services, more preventive measures in place to prevent a fire or explosion.

 

[FarminCy]

I agree with this. Last night you couldn't tell from the pictures. They were just saying fertilizer plant, but today you can clearly see that this was a retail location. You can tell this by all the individual NH3 tanks which are 1000 gallon tanks and the fact that they stored grain there. Looks like a building next to their grain receiving center was on fire and hard to tell what exploded first grain bins or one of the Main NH3 tanks, but both went in that explosion. As far as I knew the dry fertilizer today will not burn, to prevent use in use of explosives, but is not to say at that high of temp it would not.

This was a plant like and Farm Services, CPS or a Coop and most of the time these are not too large and almost all of them are located in a small town or right outside of town. If this would have been an actual manufacturing fertilizer plant they would have there own fire services, more preventive measures in place to prevent a fire or explosion.

Dry fert that is most commonly available won't burn unless it is insanely high temp that would be pretty tough to reach even under extreme conditions. If it is very dry it will smolder in small quantities if you hold a torch to them but considering total mass and how much moisture is absorbed in plants bins it would be pretty tough to get whole bin to burn.

But you guys are right looking back at pics now it is clearly a retail plant. And you are right about their own safety teams, there is no way any manufacturing plant would let a volunteer fire department on site during an emergency. That is not a knock against volunteer FD's but any large plant has it's own safety crews and works directly with county and state safety agencies.