Fertilizer explosion in West, Texas
ConversazioniDisaster Buffs
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1oregonobsessionz
You know it was a crazy week when an Elvis impersonator sent ricin to the President, a Mississippi senator, and judge; a fertilizer explosion in Texas killed a number of people and leveled much of the town . . . and both stories were buried by news of the bombs at the Boston Marathon.
The fatalities in the fertilizer explosion may be the most incomprehensible. This incident occurred just one day after the 66th anniversary of the Texas City disaster of 1947. In that incident, some 2300 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer in the hold of the French registered vessel Grandcamp detonated, triggering chain-reaction explosions in nearby fertilizer and oil storage facilities that killed 581 people. Wouldn't you think every single student in Texas schools would learn about a disaster of this magnitude? And that building codes would require minimum setbacks between fertilizer plants and residential or public assembly facilities? The town of West is located about 240 miles northwest of Texas City.
The fatalities in the fertilizer explosion may be the most incomprehensible. This incident occurred just one day after the 66th anniversary of the Texas City disaster of 1947. In that incident, some 2300 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer in the hold of the French registered vessel Grandcamp detonated, triggering chain-reaction explosions in nearby fertilizer and oil storage facilities that killed 581 people. Wouldn't you think every single student in Texas schools would learn about a disaster of this magnitude? And that building codes would require minimum setbacks between fertilizer plants and residential or public assembly facilities? The town of West is located about 240 miles northwest of Texas City.
2prosfilaes
#1: And that building codes would require minimum setbacks between fertilizer plants and residential or public assembly facilities?
That's a pain in the ass. It's like when the Pepcon plant blew up out here, all the housing in the vicinity was new. It's very expensive to buy up all the land around you, and nobody wants to work at a plant that's nowhere near any residential area, and no one wants to plan for their factory blowing up, instead of planning to stop their factory from blowing up. Very low probability events are hard to plan for, since you're trading direct upfront costs to handle an event that will almost certainly not occur.
That's a pain in the ass. It's like when the Pepcon plant blew up out here, all the housing in the vicinity was new. It's very expensive to buy up all the land around you, and nobody wants to work at a plant that's nowhere near any residential area, and no one wants to plan for their factory blowing up, instead of planning to stop their factory from blowing up. Very low probability events are hard to plan for, since you're trading direct upfront costs to handle an event that will almost certainly not occur.
3varielle
Preliminary findings are that there was no sprinkler system and there hadn't been an OSHA inspection since 1985. From what I'm hearing so far there are no restrictions amount of those sorts of chemicals that can be kept in one location. Though who knows, press reports on everything this week have been subject to wild speculation and hyperbole.
