Thread for talking about industrial explosions, accidents/craziness of the past

The scale of the Bingham Canyon Mine landslide this week is difficult to get a handle on.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZVALdTysOog/UWd2m_YVHrI/AAAAAAAAKTU/QHSGQLswjBM/s1600/92059.jpg

Years ago there was an in-depth two part essay in the (late Shawn era?) New Yorker on the dynamite industry: three things I remember from it.

1: back in the day, lots of people used to keep dynamite in their garden shed -- well, it's basically just a cardboard (?) roll infused with nitroglycerine, and after a while the nitro will drip out of the roll into the ground below (concrete or whatever) and render it explosively lethal to any spark or crunch of grit, or dropped hammer

2: a regular feature of the early history of living a medium distance from dynamite and nitro-glycerine-factories was the story in the morning paper: "nitro factory explodes; building, workers blown to atoms" <-- "blown to atoms" intended to mean pretty much just that

3: the fumes given off by nitro very quickly produce an extremely powerful headache in all workers in such factories -- chances of angry carelessness surely heightened by this...

disclaimer: 25 years since i read the article, so some of it i may have misremembered or simplified -- but y'know, blimey

xxpost crikey!

Local Utah news station on the mine landslide. Worth watching up to where you see those giant dump trucks buried like Tonka toys

dynamite+factory+blown+to+atoms

I forgot abt Longford. in the scope of things the actual plant explosion was less of an impact than the chain reaction of impaired gas supply for so long. people whined like mfs. hate to think what'd happen if it'd been 2 weeks of no electricity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Gërdec_explosions - an accident at a munitions depot in Albania results in the whole works exploding at once.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO15dZIH_f8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_t4yFHZQqc
Kolding Fireworks Factory Explosion. i think it went viral at one point, or maybe i saw it on a "outrageous disaster" clip show.

Pretty certain that YouTube made all those clip shows obsolete.

i know, and yet they are still on, probably syndicated and distributed from brazil to timbuktu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlUSwdLBv4k

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_artificial_non-nuclear_explosions

The largest non-nuclear explosion in history, from 13 km away:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjy6gTYqb3s

so beautiful!

That's video of the Feb 1969 launch that exploded 12,000 m up, not the July explosion on the launch pad, which was so powerful it took 18 months to rebuild.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)

The Long March explosion in China is still o_O - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelsat_708

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBJ9ue6GKek

Video from the Foton-M1 explosion super scary - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foton-M1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl9u-h_btBo

A Russian Proton-M crashed today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWv4ZZArP-g

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23141297

The company responsible (Russian Space Systems) is enormously corrupt. Two of its general directors were arrested for fraud and money laundering a couple of weeks ago. This is likely to be a fairly big scandal - not least because Russia will probably end up compensating Kazakhstan for dumping vast amounts of toxic fuel over the cosmodrome.

Here's an oldie but goodie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyMbaZ9FVjA&list=FLluCym6NWsFzbQo3gJaEzlg&index=666

Recent one from a different angle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl12dXYcUTo

From the Lac Mégantic trail derailment/explosion

http://actualites.sympatico.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Lac-M%C3%A9gantic-explosion.jpeg

oh no! : (

Horrifying video of the Lac Magentic fires by a man who had just left the bar near the epicentre of the explosion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRb3JHsiqfA

Lac-Megantic, Quebec (CNN) -- Canadian authorities have found evidence that a criminal act may have led to a train crash in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, that killed at least 15 people, provincial police Capt. Michel Forget said Tuesday.

There have been many questions about the crash and explosion that wiped out a swath of the town 130 miles east of Montreal. As of Tuesday evening, 35 people were still missing, Forget said.

Authorities offered no further details about the case but said it was not caused by terrorism.

"I will not speculate on the elements that we have recovered," Forget told reporters.

I'm heading to Lac-Megantic on Monday. Oh man.

Whoa

I'm looking at the maps now. Jesus Christ, that thing happened right in the middle of town, more or less.

Correction: I am not going there next week, trip is off. Guys from Transport Canada have every single motel room in town. Man, I hope that place can recover.

some incredible photos available here: http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/07/freight-train-derails-and-explodes-in-lac-megantic-quebec/100548/

There was that one time the U.S. government almost killed me.

---

The Titan II Launch Complex 374-7 in Southside (Van Buren County), just north of Damascus (Van Buren and Faulkner counties), became the site of the most highly publicized disaster in the history of the Titan II missile program when its missile exploded within the launch duct on September 19, 1980. An Air Force airman was killed, and the complex was destroyed. The Titan II Missile Launch Complex 374-7 Site was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on February 18, 2000.

Complex 374-7 had already been the site of one significant accident on January 27, 1978, when an oxidizer leak sent a cloud of toxic fumes 3,000 feet long, 300 feet wide, and 100 feet high drifting across U.S. Highway 65. Civilians were evacuated from the area, and four people suffered some ill effects from contact with the vapors. The leak was quickly repaired.

On September 18, 1980, at about 6:30 p.m., an airman conducting maintenance on the Titan II missile dropped a wrench socket, which fell about eighty feet before hitting and piercing the skin on the rocket’s first-stage fuel tank, causing it to leak. The commander of the 308th Strategic Missile Wing quickly formed a potential-hazard team, and by 9:00 p.m., the Air Force personnel manning the site were evacuated. About one hour later, Air Force security police began evacuating nearby civilian residents as efforts continued to determine the status of the missile and the fuel leak.

Senior Airman David Livingston and Sergeant Jeff K. Kennedy entered the launch complex early on the morning of September 19 to get readings of airborne fuel concentrations, which they found to be at their maximum. At about 3:00 a.m., the two men returned to the surface to await further instructions. Just as they sat down on the concrete edge of the access portal, the missile exploded, blowing the 740-ton launch duct closure door 200 feet into the air and some 600 feet northeast of the launch complex. The W-53 nuclear warhead landed about 100 feet from the launch complex’s entry gate; its safety features operated correctly and prevented any loss of radioactive material. Kennedy, his leg broken, was blown 150 feet from the silo. Livingston lay amid the rubble of the launch duct for some time before security personnel located and evacuated him. Livingston died of his injuries that day. Twenty-one people were injured by the explosion or during rescue efforts.

http://www.501lifemag.com/images/stories/1010/titan.jpg

Oops.

Were you evacuated?

damn

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/megantic070813/s_m07_30772686.jpg

xp to hl

We lived in a trailer about ten miles away from the site, as the crow flies, so we weren't part of the initial evacuation.

But when that damned thing exploded, it felt like our trailer jumped into the air. Mom at that point decided that if there were nuclear warheads flying around, we should go ahead and get moving voluntarily.

I was almost seven. I remember standing on our porch in the middle of the night, everything being completely still. It was in a very rural area, so hearing voices yelling from the highway was pretty scary.

In town, where I went to school, there was this strip mall parking lot that served as the de facto town square. And at 4 in the morning, it was packed with pick-up trucks pulled up next to each other, families in their pajamas sitting on tailgates, and everyone listening to the local AM station.

(I'd later work for that station. My future boss was on the air that night and gives a pretty good account of what it was like in this anniversary article. The AM station was a daytime-only station, meaning they had to sign off at sunset each night. When my boss turned it up to full power that night because fuckit armageddon is here, the signal reached all the way into Canada.)

We went about 60 miles to the west and spent most of the morning at a Shoney's. Even after hearing that the coast was clear and Bee Branch, Arkansas, wasn't the site of a nuclear winter, Mom still took us to meet my dad, who then took me and my sister to our grandparents in Memphis.

WOW. That's nuts. Glad to have you with us.

Why, thank you. It's nice to be here.

The whole thing is so nuts the more I've thought about it. They dismantled the Titan II program in the late 80s. I even saw one of the missiles getting trucked down a highway with about 600 police escorts (give or take 550.) Everyone knew where the silos were - there were even signs on the highways near them that simply said things like "XT9-OO374" on them. You can still spot where they were today. Anytime you see a completely paved road with a cattle gate and crossing leading to nowhere from a three-digit state highway, it ain't leading up a hill to Shangri-La.

Picturing those weapons of mass destruction buried in fields and meadows so close to my home, imagining them all shooting out all at once over the pine trees had the football ever been activated... I mean, I won't even keep a gun in my house, much less a nuclear missile in my backyard.

Here's one of the entries, not the same one talked about above:

http://i.imgur.com/sEiVXBV.png

And here's what it looks like from the air. Comparing the closed-up circle on the right to the house in the middle should give you an idea of what shot up into the air that night in 1980.

http://i.imgur.com/150YfUY.jpg

jesus

!!!

You know, I say that, but comparing the pix, I guess the circle wasn't the exact diameter of the missile either.

http://www.501lifemag.com/images/stories/1010/titan.jpg

Lac-Megantic, Quebec (CNN) -- The head of the railway whose runaway train devastated a small Quebec town cast doubt on his engineer's story Wednesday as he arrived to face insults from survivors and harsh questions from reporters.

Edward Burkhardt said the engineer has been suspended without pay and faces a criminal investigation by Canadian authorities.

He said the engineer reported to railroad managers that he set 11 hand brakes on the train cars before they broke away from their engines, but "I think it's questionable whether he did."

"Our general feeling is now that is not true," said Burkhardt,chairman of the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway. The engineer had worked for the MM&A for "many years" and "had a completely clear safety record up until Saturday," Burkhardt said.

Most of the 73-car train derailed in the center of Lac-Megantic early Saturday, and tank cars full of oil exploded and burned. Quebec provincial authorities have found 20 bodies, and 30 more are missing "and most probably dead," Quebec Provincial Police Capt. Michel Forget said Wednesday.

Those still missing are feared dead, possibly vaporized by the resulting inferno.

I've walked down Rue Frontenac by that MusiCafe and Dollarama that are now gone. I remember taking a photo of a street sandwich board using what looked like Crazy Frog advertising "24hr tanning!"

I'm hoping everybody at the customer site I was going to visit are still okay.

Mr. Burkhardt has offered varying explanations for what happened, at one point blaming "tampering" with the train's locomotives. But on Wednesday, he told reporters that the train's engineer had apparently lied to the railroad about whether the hand brakes had been set on 11 of the train's freight cars when he parked the train at a location uphill from Lac-Mégantic on Friday night, a measure required under Canadian law and the railroad's internal rules. "It seems that adequate hand brakes were not set on the train," Mr. Burkhardt said, "and it was the engineer's responsibility to set them."

He said the engineer had been suspended without pay, and added, "I don't think he'll be back working with us."

Mr. Burkhardt, who is also the president and chief executive of Rail World, the railway's parent company, was greeted by angry hecklers when he arrived in Lac-Mégantic on Wednesday, his first visit since the accident. During the sometimes chaotic news conference, Mr. Burkhardt said that the small railroad's insurance might not be adequate to cover claims from the derailment, which destroyed 30 buildings.

this guy sounds like a real prize

The company is responsible for liabilities, regardless of how how much is covered by its insurance policy. He's basically saying Montreal Maine & Atlantic Railway, his own roll-up parent company RailWorld, and likely himself as RailWorld's founder and likely principal shareholder, are all going to take a huge financial hit from the disaster. He's not saying "screw Lac-Mégantic".

Parts installed “upside down” caused Russian rocket to explode last week

http://web-images.chacha.com/images/galleryimage644533022-feb-16-2012-600x973.jpg

Man, that's some Kerbal Space Program-level idiocy right there.

My favourite is Mariner 1 crashing shortly after launch due to a single character error in a software program.

Train fire as seen from space

http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/81000/81581/lacmegantic_vir_2013185_187.jpg

Here's where I really sound like an idiot, but

This weekend was the first time that I really understood what a spillway was. I've read about them before, but only formulated in my mind that they were a type of "runaway ramp" for the water or a temporary reservoir. I didn't "get" what they actually did though.

I think my problem stems from the fact that the dam in my hometown has the spillways on the other side of the dam itself. There's never been some sort of water chute off to the side used to relieve the lake elevation.

http://i.imgur.com/OmXyHlr.jpg

I mean, I would identify this as a dam, straight up, but still, in my mind's eye, I want to call it a levee.

http://i.imgur.com/nFNQZ20.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUowiNeF_Rw

Whoa.

Epic

Presenting the YouTube channel for the Chemical Safety Board investigations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg7mLSG-Yws

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdDuHxwD5R4

The commentary makes it a candidate for the Real England thread but Buncefield has already been mentioned here upthread.
Buncefield fire: 'Idiotic' teens capture fuel depot blaze on film

A truck full of ammonium nitrate exploded near Camden, Ark., on Wednesday. Only one person, the driver, was killed.

Here's the road from Google Street View:

https://i.imgur.com/SXmioE2.jpg

Now here's the road as it looked yesterday:

https://i.imgur.com/c8YIP5E.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/T0ASbFJ.jpg

Crazy part is this: Camden's way down south of here, closer to Louisiana than anything I see on a regular basis. Despite that, my NextDoor app is filled with posts asking "What the hell was that noise?" Even I heard thunder even though in hindsight, it hasn't rained here like that since last week.

It wasn't thunder. It was the goddammed fertilizer truck!

NEW: A deadly chemical truck explosion in Camden was heard nearly 100 miles away. @KATVToddYak explains how the sound waves traveled that far: https://t.co/eLZ3t2FqwM | #arnews pic.twitter.com/6EI79pze6q

— KATV News (@KATVNews) March 27, 2019

Some spooky shit!

https://i.imgur.com/C9rKKjJ.jpg

holy fuck

I haven't ever been able to really picture how a moving truck could take out the Murrah Building. Maybe it's for a lack of trying. (I don't really want to picture it.)

But those pix help put it into a little perspective.

otm

umm yeah. goddamn.

My favourite is Mariner 1 crashing shortly after launch due to a single character error in a software program.

― Meine Damen und Herren, ein grosse sh*tstorm! (snoball), Thursday, July 11, 2013 3:28 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Copyediting: SRS BZNESS.

(Thanks for the name; I remembered the story loosely and have been known to cite it when explaining the importance of proper spelling, punctuation, and grammar.)

― Word Salad Username (j.lu), Friday, 12 July 2013 16:46 (five years ago)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LJz-TWV3so

Video of spectacular shockwave from explosion at military unit in Krasnoyarsk Krai of Russia pic.twitter.com/0yeg3hIb5F

— Liveuamap (@Liveuamap) August 5, 2019

Yipes

Although technically off topic for this thread since that appears to be ongoing

fair

I'll take it.

https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/11/27/us/port-neches-plant-explosion/index.html

Also that fertilizer truck blast...damn. I guess if a truck can be heard 100 miles away it makes it much more believable that Krakatoa could be heard blowing its top 3000 miles away across the expanse of the Indian ocean.

"The black stuff floating, don't touch it," said Troy Monk, who is the director of health safety and security for the TPC Group.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RFDKpwdbEA

Knew I recognized the narrator from somewhere.

Definitely an older one: pier collapse at 1883 church picnic in Baltimore kills 63.

https://anengineersaspect.blogspot.com/2010/05/the-tivoli-maryland-pier-collapse-july.html

Aerial footage of Exeter bomb exploding

Welp, I'd hate to be going to work in Dresden next week.

gerry having the last laugh there

Extruded aluminum factory goes from zero to full incineration in just over 30 seconds (video on Reddit)
https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/v48rnt/extrudedaluminium_factory_jun_22/

Basically, if there's an industrial fire in an enclosed space - GTFO immediately.

New USCSB video on the 2019 Philadelphia refinery explosion. Super-informative and recommended if you bookmark this thread.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc8qXTh6tTY

That is the sweetest YouTube channel

TIL what a dead leg is and why popcorn polymer is incredibly dangerous

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-3BFXpBcjc

O_O

holy shit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhRlm0yQ2ZU