

Fertilizer plant explodes near Waco, Texas - vecter
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/04/fertilizer-plant-just-exploded-waco-texas/64337/

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vecter
For those who didn't click through to the article, this video is crazy:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROrpKx3aIjA>

The explosion happens at 0:29.

~~~
yk
Before watching the video, switch off the sound.

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GuiA
Or leave it. Most people have only seen explosions in the movie, where the
hero hides behind a tree and walks it off. This shows you how it really
happens in real life.

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ck2
I love how cable news now is juts basically youtube videos looping over and
over and amateur photos because they have zero in-field reporter budgets.
Opinion and talking heads are far cheaper and people watch anyway.

Cannot wait until corporate news loses all power.

As far as broadcast news, why exactly are we giving them airspace?

But they are thrilled, just incredibly relieved, they have something else to
talk about since they ran out of facts about Boston two days ago. I mean it's
not like any hope for national gun control was completely thrown out the
window today.

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brzed
I happened to be (unfortunately) watching the coverage on CNN. Sanjay
Gupta...a DOCTOR said

"just about any chemical you can think of is at some point in a fertilizer
plant"

When you have nothing factual to talk about, ratchet up the fear to keep the
viewers on baited breath.

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yread
Apparently, there were some pretty strong explosions before:

Halifax explosion - a ship carrying 2000+ tons of high explosives, exploded in
the middle of Halifax harbor completely obliterating the whole town,
evaporating all the water in the harbor, creating 18 m tsunami, throwing the
gun barrel from a ship 5km away.

Just 2 years ago there was this huge explosion
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelos_Florakis_Naval_Base_e...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelos_Florakis_Naval_Base_explosion)
with more than 2kt TNT equivalent yield, check these before
[http://www.hellas-sat.net/files/image/accident-
cy/20%20June%...](http://www.hellas-sat.net/files/image/accident-
cy/20%20June%202011%20Before%20Accident.jpg) and after image
[http://www.hellas-sat.net/files/image/accident-
cy/12%20July%...](http://www.hellas-sat.net/files/image/accident-
cy/12%20July%202011%20after%20Accident.jpg)

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huxley
I live near the middle of the area destroyed in the Halifax Explosion.

It was pretty significant, but didn't obliterate the whole town. The Richmond
district (which is in the east part of the Halifax North End) was almost
completely wiped out, almost 2000 people died and 9000 Haligonians were
injured out of a population of 65,000.

If you ever watch the Harrison Ford movie, K-19: The Widowmaker, you'd see the
area of the Halifax North End that was affected, it was the location for shots
in the film that stood for the Soviet-era Sevmash shipyard.

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DigitalSea
This is a really sad event for the locals considering Waco is a rather small
town of about 126,000 people, the plant hired a lot of people. I think the
saddest part of all of this is the comments on most of the news articles you
read about the explosion (including the one linked). People are drawing all
sorts of conclusions from it being related to the Boston bombing incident to
it being an attack by North Korea and arguing over trivial-political nonsense
that doesn't even relate to the story.

The explosion is probably one of the scariest things you'll ever see, imagine
being within a mere few hundred metres of the explosion and the amount of G's
that would be emitted, for survivors who were close by I couldn't imagine
anything more terrifying. My heart goes out to the locals in Waco and those
who've lost family/friends.

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iSnow
>The explosion is probably one of the scariest things you'll ever see

Come on, please could we stop losing perspective here? It is by far from one
of the scariest things that have happened in my lifetime, it is a tragedy for
those afflicted by it - but accidents like this probably happen every few
months somewhere in the world.

~~~
DigitalSea
Maybe not scary watching it via a Youtube embed... Nobody is losing
perspective, I can't imagine anything scarier than being inside of or close to
a fertiliser factory housing toxic chemicals exploding, can you? Except maybe
being a victim of an atomic blast, but that doesn't happen everyday. Factories
housing deadly chemicals don't just explode every few months, I don't recall
the last time I heard of anything like this happening. Calm down.

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manglav
This is absolutely crazy. I will tell my professor, and hopefully we can do a
case study on how to prevent explosions like these.

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phyalow
really!!! keep me posted brah!

>Please read the comment guidelines.

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manglav
I just did, and didn't see anything I violated. I could be wrong though, and
would love to correct my behavior. I said it was absolutely crazy because if
you go frame-by-frame there is literally a flash of white in a single frame,
then the explosion. No build-up, no nothing. It happened within 3/24 of a
second. If you make some estimate of the scale, you could use dimensional
analysis to estimate the energy of the explosion. The time scales are a little
large, but it could be done to probably two orders of magnitude.

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tantalor
Ignore the trolls.

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ComputerGuru
That's a really poor article, just pictures and no facts.

BBC w/ ongoing coverage: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22195495>

CNN w/ ongoing coverage: [http://us.cnn.com/2013/04/18/us/texas-
explosion/index.html?h...](http://us.cnn.com/2013/04/18/us/texas-
explosion/index.html?hpt=hp_t1)

The casualty reports are all over the place, sources are saying anywhere from
2 to 70 killed; 60 to 200 injured. Nearby buildings and homes destroyed. There
is a nursing home right next to it, fate currently unknown. Regardless, a real
tragedy.

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InclinedPlane
Hopefully this causes some heads to roll: "West fertilizer plant said in
report that it presented no risk":
[http://www.dallasnews.com/news/state/headlines/20130417-west...](http://www.dallasnews.com/news/state/headlines/20130417-west-
fertilizer-plant-said-in-report-that-it-presented-no-risk.ece)

~~~
tantalor
I'm not surprised. There was obviously a very complacent attitude at the
plant, otherwise this accident would not have happened.

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derleth
Given how explosive nitrogen compounds are (they all want to turn back into N2
gas, some of them more badly than others), I'm surprised this doesn't happen
more often.

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iSnow
Well they certainly do happen:

\- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppau_explosion>

\- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_Disaster>

Ammonium nitrate is nothing to trifle with: "As all involved died in the
explosion, the causes are not clear",

