Magellan Tank Farm Fire - Kansas City, KS

5-3-08 | George Kelley

[gpk9]

A cloud-to-ground ligtning strike from a severe thunderstom hit a large gasoline storage tank at the Magellan Petroleum tank farm in Kansas City, igniting 2 million plus gallons of unleaded gasoline, rapidly growing into a huge inferno of flame belching over 200 feet in the air.

Local authorities have elected to let the fire burn itself out, which is anticipated to take a day or more.

The fire is presently contained to the burning tank. Authorites and company officials feel confident the fire poses no danger to other large storage tanks nearby.

Video from local news helicopters shows tank walls slowly collapsing inward from the heat, but there is no indication of gasoline leaking from the tank.

The tank is surrounded by an earth dike designed to contain any leakage.

The screenshow below has a yellow circle indicating which tank is burning.

[dila813]

dang, I own stock, wonder what is going to happen to their stock price

[null and void]

No idea, but the pump price will be up 20¢/gal by morning.

[MHGinTN]

Two things: first, this will not drop the price of the stock but will raise the price of gasoline to stations being served; second, if there were 2 million gallons in the tank, it would take more than a day or two to burn out, so the tank was probably not 2/3 full.

[bboop]

Um, what about the carbon release? Where’s Al Gore when we need him? Perhaps the carbon-cappers can run in there with their tofu and put it out.

[Huntress]

Video here: http://www.myfoxkc.com/myfox/MyFox/pages/sidebar_video.jsp?contentId=6690633&version=1&locale=EN-US

[Billthedrill]

Stand aside. I'll handle it.

[Dumpster Baby]

[stormer]

[Myrddin]

Unleaded is $3.89 in my area. Diesel is $4.79. Both prices increased by 4 cents since yesterday.

[gpk9]

Typo corrections: The date is 6-3, not 5-3. It is “screenshot” not “screenshow.”

[stormer]

I couldn’t find a more recent picture - this one is hours old. I paid $4.28 yesterday for regular. Yikes! I don’t want to date myself, but I remember being outraged when it hit $.40, and I swore if it ever got to a buck I’d quit driving. LOL

[Stonewall Jackson]

Two million gallons up in smoke. Sigh. That’s enough to keep me going for the next 1200 years.

[gpk9]

“Um, what about the carbon release?”

Local news people have asked many on-air questions this evening about air quality, the possibility of toxic smoke, etc, ad nausem.

These people really should do their research before they open their mouth. They shouldn’t be asking such alarming questions on-air. They should be giving factual information. The smoke is in the nature of black smoke coming from a car exhaust pipe.

Local news people have frankly embarrassed us with their litany of false statements and speculations, and foolish on-air questions revealing little or no factual investigation.

One of the local weather people was even asking on-air if another band of rain moving in might put out the fire.

[Myrddin]

I filled up the tank of my Honda CB175 with premium priced at 25.9 cents per gallon when I was in high school. Most of the time it was priced at 29.9 and raised to astronomical ripoff prices of 38.9 on big weekends e.g. Memorial Day. The last time I was "outraged" at the pump price is at a Union 76 station selling for 76.9 when all the surrounding stations were at 58.9.

My son just purchased at 1998 Ford Explorer with the Eddie Bauer trim package for $4,000. The 2002 Ford Ranger XLT pickup was priced at $7495 and was relatively bare bones. We've driven the Explorer for a few days now. It is averaging 12.1 miles per gallon. At that rate, a typical 12,000 miles per year and $4 per gallon is going to add up to $4,000. The money he saved will all go into the gas tank in the first year. Fortunately, he only has a 6 mile round trip to work. He won't need to drive anywhere near 12,000 miles a year.

[The Chief]

I've been watching it here www.livenewscameras.com/

[RSmithOpt]

Awful convenient accident as gas and oil prices slid some yesterday.

"Nah, there ain't no AQ that's tippy-toed across our border at night."

[gpk9]

I doubt sabotage... this time. Several people were interivewed who state they saw the lightning bolt hit the tank. We had some pretty intense cloud-to-ground lightning yesterday afternoon. One news helicopter nearly got hit while on-scene videoing the fire.

[RSmithOpt]

Darn it!! I had just dry cleaned and pressed my tin foil hat....now I can't wear it.

I heard a blip on the news this morning referring to the lightning after I had posted my comment.

[gpk9]

1st photo appears to be taken from a position near railroad track, looking southwest. The tank in the foreground would be the tank on the east side of the burning tank.

2nd and 3rd photos appear to be taken from a position hovering over the river, looking northwest. They show another large tank in the background northwest of the burning tank, apparently built since the google satellite photo was taken.

Wind at that time was out of the west-southwest, taking the smoke east-northeast.

Later around sundown winds turned southerly, carrying the smoke north.

Yesterday’s storms were several powerful cells along a west-to-east front from a low pressure system centered west of Kansas City. Today that low pressure center has consolidated with a larger low centered over Wichita Kansas. The front has lost it’s punch and become stationary.

This is a typical early-summer storm pattern for Kansas City. The lows spinning off these fronts sweeping over Kansas City produce more powerful cells near their center, hence the tornados in Oklahoma and Kansas.

Kansas City is on the northwest “border” of the flow of warm humid air up from the gulf, a weather pattern that dominates the south. The west and northwest edge of this humidity flow is a general line from Dallas extending north east up through Tulsa and on up through Kansas City.

Along this west and northwest line the warmer humid air clashes with cooler drier air sweeping down from Canada, the dominant weather pattern of the great plains.

Strong low pressure cells develop along and west of that line when the warmer air starts rising up through the cooler air. The earth’s rotaion causes the air to spiral counter-clockwise as it rises (the gyro effect), resulting in strong tornado-producing storm cells.

The action is more intense in Oklahoma where the humid air is several degrees warmer, hence the strongest tornados being in Oklahoma.