DeWine said if they did not burn off the chemicals, it would have exploded sending shrapnel in all directions for a mile.
But why wouldn’t the fire also cause an explosion, with the increased heat and pressure?
But no explosion did not occur, so maybe the fire was a better solution?
Any chemists here?
Oops , double negative there. No explosion did occur.
It was a 'controlled burn'. A risky procedure, in it's own way, because.. yes, an explosion was always possible. But, better to try to let it burn in a specific direction than to allow the flames, and fuel to randomly go wherever they wanted.
An explosion would have been far worse. For one, the impact radius would have been huge. I'd be uncomfortable even being a mile away from such a blast. But, the worst part is... an explosion doesn't consume all of the chemicals. Rather, it physically spreads them out over a MUCH larger area.
Letting the material burn, in a controlled way, completely destroys 95+% of the hazardous material. That's a good start. There are some nasty by-products produced from the burning, like HCL. But, they are rather quickly dispersed to very low, non-hazardous levels or neutralized naturally by the environment.
Early in my career, I worked as an engineer in a plant that produced Vinyl Chloride Monomer. I'm pretty familiar with it. It's HIGHLY explosive. Not really super toxic. But, has high potential to cause cancer to someone who is routinely exposed, even to fairly low levels, over a very long time... like decades.
This event was a mess. No question. The black cloud was incredible to see. But, mother nature is pretty good at taking care of things like black clouds. Cleanup crews on the ground can get the ground and water back in good condition. I live downstream, on the Ohio river, and I'm not the least bit concerned about our drinking water. The levels of any VCM here will be so low, we probably won't even be able to measure it. And, we can measure at Part per Billion levels... ie; VERY low.
I'm not sure I really understand all the panic about this. I think the conservative news guys see it as a chance to make Biden look bad. And, maybe it is? But, they're scaring a lot of people who don't need to be frightened. There needs to be investigation, to find out what happened and why... but, chemical shipments are continuing, every day... and, they need to. They make possible virtually every part of all of our everday lives. Safely.