Posted on 08/05/2020 4:19:11 PM PDT by BenLurkin
It wouldn’t be surprising if the fireworks were set off by a truck full of matches.
That is why they mix it with other materials/fluids.
Like I stated in that post-info from that fellow, the kick was provided by not only heat, but some other catalyst. Maybe the fireworks which I do not believe for one second. I would wager that it was being mixed for bombs and they had the fire and the ignition sources being on hand, exploded. The chain reaction resulted and the rest is history.
BTW, compare this blast the one at Henderson NV years ago. That one was a HUGE explosion from rocket fuel and they actually built the dam plant over a gas line. I do not know if the gas line was active at the time of the explosion or not-I have forgot. But that dam place blew and it was nothing compared to this one. Or the one in TX years ago.
Orn an Israeli missile
BTW. That stuff is known as ditching fertilizer around the farm parts of Wisconsin.
My unit was attached to EOD for a bit. What they know and what they say can explode (easy and available) was unsettling.
Early on in the Iraq war a hospital unit was endanger of being overrun. Some EOD guys were there for treatment of minor wounds from an IED explosion. They repelled the attack with a charge made with non-dairy coffee creamer(and some other common items). AS my 20 year Army vet son says: “Those guys are scary.”
No way that a spark would set it off. I did once work for a blasting company and more than once have used ammonium nitrate prills to help start a fire in my wood burner. The stuff burns great but it needs something more energetic to make it blow, something like a stick of dynamite. Also, you generally don't mix it with other compounds until you are ready to use it. You can get it pre-mixed by the bag but usually, they spray it with diesel as it goes in the hole. You use a cap to set of the dynamite with one stick in each hole. The rest of the hole was filled with ammonium nitrate that had been sprayed with diesel fuel and then stem it to seal the blast. It always blowed up real good but no dynamite, no bang. It just burns. It burns real hot. It would be super easy to determine if it really was ammonium nitrate as it is one of the slower explosives out there at only 2700 meters per second. Just play the video in slow motion and see how fast it spreads.
No way that a spark would set it off. I did once work for a blasting company and more than once have used ammonium nitrate prills to help start a fire in my wood burner. The stuff burns great but it needs something more energetic to make it blow, something like a stick of dynamite. Also, you generally don't mix it with other compounds until you are ready to use it. You can get it pre-mixed by the bag but usually, they spray it with diesel as it goes in the hole. You use a cap to set of the dynamite with one stick in each hole. The rest of the hole was filled with ammonium nitrate that had been sprayed with diesel fuel and then stem it to seal the blast. It always blowed up real good but no dynamite, no bang. It just burns. It burns real hot. It would be super easy to determine if it really was ammonium nitrate as it is one of the slower explosives out there at only 2700 meters per second. Just play the video in slow motion and see how fast it spreads.
A marine friend of mine told me he could walk into a store and come out very prepared
“Also, you generally don’t mix it with other compounds until you are ready to use it.”
They mixed it at the plant and took it to the mine in containers to pour it into the blast holes. The plant was no bigger than a common sized machine shed.
Grand Champ exploded in Texas City about 100 yards from where I am siting right now. We are very aware of what we do and take safety as a part of our daily work. That does not sound strong enough. We take safety as the first consideration in everything we do. 1947 was a different era than today. But we would not have a warehouse full of ammonia nitrate in a populated area.
It was in that warehouse over 6 years without exploding. What was special about yesterday.
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FOUND IT!
This video shows an Israeli attack on an Iranian base in Syria.
The roaring noise is the missile warheads exploding in rapid sequence.https://t.co/51vHKcILw4— Carlos Osweda (@COsweda) August 6, 2020
The fire in the factory, which was raging before the explosion.
We had some of that stuff, we couldn’t light it on fire, it was completely inert.
We mixed it with fuel oil, lit it on fire, it didn’t go off.. it just burned
Then we put an explosion on it and it blew up a stump.
I don’t buy all this story because I never saw it demonstrated from first hand experience.
Only thing we didn’t try was putting the explosion against the plain ammonia nitrate. But since it was inert when we were working with it, we would have expected it just to produce a cloud of dust.
We were doing this by the way as part of a demonstration I was assisting on for how safe these explosives were for mining companies at a mining festival. I pretty much just did the hauling and the mixing why the explosives guy did all the actual demonstrations.
Thanks for the post. Was thinking along the same lines. As you mentioned the “mixture” it brought back to mind the Oklahoma City Penske rental truck bomb that took out most of the Federal Bldng. The mixture was in 55 gal barrel drums.
Fuses were set up to initiate, through shock tubes, 350 pounds of Tovex Blastrite Gel, which would set off the configuration of barrels. There were 13 filled barrels and nine contained ammonium nitrate and nitromethane the other four contained a mixture of ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel. Forty 50-pound bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer— each barrel weighed nearly 500 lbs. Very destructive as was shown— killing over 168 people including children.
Yes, but that was ARSON !
Ya know...that SOB holed up before that here across the Valley where I now live. In a RV campground on old rt 66.
I forgot about that explosion.
Don’t think so.
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