West Pharmaceuticals Explosion in North Carolina

Fox News | 01.29.03 | Me

[kcvl]

Plant employees over 200 people...

[Peach]

Does CNN do live feed? (Just another option; don't flame me!)

[kcvl]

300 - 350 employees...150 - 200 people at work POSSIBLY.

[concerned about politics]

Could this company have been involved in anti-germ/biochemical warfare research, perhaps? On the sly? And someone found out about it?

Yeh. Biogenics and vaccines, but I can't say if this paticular plant was making them. So far the news just says medical equipment.

[GovernmentShrinker]

They do not make vaccines (don't know where that rumor came from) -- just syringes and other pharmaceutical delivery equipment.

[Route66]

Perhaps 150 people in building on this shift.

[Howlin]

Woman on 11 from Lenoir County government, talking about chaplains and family services.

This looks bad........having them fill out forms with vital statistics.

[SelmaLee]

No, not good signs at all...prayers being offered here too.

[Peach]

Nevermind my previous post. CNN just went to Talkback Live and I've changed the channel.

[azhenfud]

What a mess! Prayers for all involved....

[Carolina]

you never know what could be in that smoke...

Wind is blowing hard.

[Catspaw]

I saw a house--actually, just the slab on which a house once stood on surrounded by hundreds of thousands of matchstick-sized pieces of wood after a large propane tank blew. The blast killed the three people inside and blew the nearby houses off their slabs & basements.

[DoughtyOne]

I wouldn't go down the terrorism path at this point folks. Industrial accidents happen. This is a tragic event, but let's not worry people about terrorism.

[steve86]

Amazing that PMSNBC is the only major news network not to have VIDEO -- just showing a stupid map the whole time.

Pray for the victims and potential victims...

[Mo1]

No CNN isn't covering it now

[John H K]

As people found out in early 2000 when the Y2K nutters were frantically trying to find evidence that Y2K was happening, there are a lot more fires/explosions at industrial plants "normally" than people think, especially if you go looking for them.

This was an unusually large explosion for an industrial accident, particularly outside the natural gas/petroleum industry.

Usually unusual disasters are a result of a SEQUENCE of things going wrong, each of which is fairly rare themselves, but combining to be really bad. Since probability dictates this doesn't happen much, this makes unusual accidents unusual.

One nice thing about FR is on almost any topic there are 1-2 posters who actually know what they're talking about.

I suspect this may have been TWO different things that can go wrong in plastics manufacturing happening at once.

[Peach]

How far are you from the blast site? Perhaps turn off the heating in your office/house for a while until the smoke clears out.

[kcvl]

This is so sad.

[mhking]

And I wish Fox would do a live feed.

Fox doesn't, but ask, and ye shall receive...wwitv.com/portal.htm

Check the right rail - it's a bootlegged feed, but it's FNC & CNN nonetheless. The FNC feed is flaky at times, but the CNN feed is pretty clean. You need Real Player for both - The firewall here at work won't let me pull anything in...[sigh]

[alnick]

Sickening thoughts: How far is this place from the coast and how far is it from I-95/I-40? (putting tin-foil hat on firmly) Could it be...AQ test firing a stinger?

I can't help but notice the coincidence of a pharmaceuticals factory being blown up the day after the president gives a pre-war speech against Iraq.