Massive explosion rock a fertiller plants near waco texas

[Eats Compost]

Not saying that, but it looks like something hit from the left... maybe thats where the tank was that exploded and caused the larger explosion?

Probably just something combusting.

[A Day to Remember]

Yea i wasent saying lolnorthkoreadidit or lolobamadidit, just pointing it out incase others missed it because its not something we could see from the other angles.

[Todgruppe]

Yea i wasent saying lolnorthkoreadidit or lolobamadidit, just pointing it out incase others missed it because its not something we could see from the other angles.

yeah i spent like 30 minutes rapidly pausing/unpausing trying to find it.

[mvaliz]

Well, maybe he was attached to his hat and it was an emotional sort of hurt.

...I got to admit that it was a very clean cap he was wearing. :P

[Bakis]

I know this topic already kinda' died, but I've read some interesting information in the newspaper today:

About 3/4 of the town of West claims Czech heritage. Most of them have ancestors that came about 4 generations ago from the town of Frenštát pod Radhoštěm. Incidentally, in this very town, two months ago, there was a gas explosion that killed I think about 7 people and took a whole block of flats down. Seems like it's an unlucky year for the people of Frenštát, wherever they may live.

Not sure I want to pin this on lack of luck but more of the stupidity to put a static bomb smack in the middle of residences and nursing homes.
It is surreal borderlining a tragicomedy.

[Masark]

Not sure I want to pin this on lack of luck but more of the stupidity to put a static bomb smack in the middle of residences and nursing homes.
It is surreal borderlining a tragicomedy.

More like the other way around (the fertilizer plant was there first), but the municipality still needs to be beaten severely for allowing this kind of insane zoning.

[Bakis]

More like the other way around (the fertilizer plant was there first), but the municipality still needs to be beaten severely for allowing this kind of insane zoning.

Yes might be the other way around but it does not really matter. That a plant of housing are allowed to coexist in such a tight space is beyond me.

[Tribunal]

More like the other way around (the fertilizer plant was there first), but the municipality still needs to be beaten severely for allowing this kind of insane zoning.

Not sure I want to pin this on lack of luck but more of the stupidity to put a static bomb smack in the middle of residences and nursing homes.
It is surreal borderlining a tragicomedy.

It's way more common than most people think. The plant is there first, and it attracts workers and shipping, and the town grows around it. What is now a fairly large city near here, Frisco, is having to pay millions of dollars to get rid of an old refinery that is now toxic. But guess what was there first? The refinery. And guess who lobbied to build neighborhoods around it? The homebuilders, because previous zoning had left the area less-crowded than the rest of the city. They knew it was there, and the builders still pushed to have the area rezoned.

There are sooo many other toxic or otherwise dangerous small plants around the country. It's a failure of the system as a whole, not just any one small part.

And really, it's arguably not a failure at all. The accidents are uncommon and widespread. They're tragic, but to the people making the decisions to spend the money to isolate/inspect/regulate/protect/etc them, it's all about cost-benefit, and these are generally within 'acceptable losses'. Cold, but common.

[Masark]

They're tragic, but to the people making the decisions to spend the money to isolate/inspect/regulate/protect/etc them, it's all about cost-benefit, and these are generally within 'acceptable losses'. Cold, but common.

Where "acceptable losses"=="any and all", because it's not their costs. By the time the butcher's bill comes due, they've already bugged off and possibly gone out of business.

[Tribunal]

Where "acceptable losses"=="any and all", because it's not their costs. By the time the butcher's bill comes due, they've already bugged off and possibly gone out of business.

I don't totally disagree. There are certainly cases of gross negligence and/or taking risk too far, and some of the evidence coming out seems to indicate that's likely the situation in West.

However, it also kind of reminds me of the 'furor' over Nuclear Power. This being a developed country, most of our 'Nuclear accidents' involve leaks of radiation that are less than background level, at the very worse. Yet it still brings the people out of the woodwork who sit there and go "ban all the nuclear power plants how can you put something so dangerous in our city bluh bluh bluh bluh." Sometimes reward over risk is legitimate.

Not every industrial accident was malicious. Not every town with a plant of some kind is "stupid". Yes, it would be nice if they could all be isolated in an industrial park, but that's not always doable, especially in such a small town. And even in an industrial park, people still work there. Sometimes accidents are going to happen, but that doesn't mean we "ban all the nuclear power plants" and then sit in the dark.

[Gheld]

Is probably what you are talking about.

Most likely there was some of the product being stored outside (or was moved outside when the fire started, or it was outside in the process of being loaded into a shipping container). Once heat from the fire reached it, it probably initiated the chain reaction (because more oxygen is available outside, and there could have been industrial machinery parked out there with full fuel tanks, and as we all know Ammonium Nitrate + hydrocarbons = uber high explosive. And once that chain reaction started, it pretty much took everything combustible with it.

EDIT:

I know this topic already kinda' died, but I've read some interesting information in the newspaper today:

About 3/4 of the town of West claims Czech heritage. Most of them have ancestors that came about 4 generations ago from the town of Frenštát pod Radhoštěm. Incidentally, in this very town, two months ago, there was a gas explosion that killed I think about 7 people and took a whole block of flats down. Seems like it's an unlucky year for the people of Frenštát, wherever they may live.

That is some very dark irony. It's kind of like the guy who survived Hiroshima and moved to Nagasaki afterwards. (And somehow he survived that too).

[Tychoblu]

Maybe this had something to do with the fact the plant had 270 tons of ammonium nitrate on site:?