Texas fertilizer plant that exploded failed to report it was storing volatile chemical used in the Oklahoma City bombing at 1,350 times the safety levels

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• There's going to be some homicide charges filed - even in Texas you can't get away with this kind of negligence unless you are employed by the federal government.

• I worked with the stuff quite a bit in liquid form when I worked in lawn & tree care, and of course the trucks we drove ran on diesel -- so yeah, I spent YEARS driving around a 500 gallon bomb kit! Tho' I suppose the stuff would have to dry out of solution before it became very hazardous. On the other hand, I recall a conversation with a friend of mine who was a local town fire chief, and he said he's answered quite a few calls where a diesel/nitrate mix had touched off quite spontaneously! Nothing huge or spectacular. Just to the point, it IS a very volatile mix to have.

• now the EPA is going to use this situation to get even more militant on made-up crap.

• As an aside my brother-in-law is a farmer and he's expecting the price of fertilizer is going up.

• Uhh... I think it's worth mentioning that most fertilizer is ammonium nitrate. Just diluted with some additives. It makes sense that a fertilizer plant would have lots of it laying around.

  I think it would be kind of obvious that Ammonium Nitrate would be in the plant in those kinds of levels.

  • That's right. These kind of plants are all over the country and ammonium nitrate is a common inventory item. What's not common in places like this is fire.

    • My question is, why was it located in a residential area of the town, and a crowded area of residents, at that? In my hometown, we had a chemical plant, but it was located on the outskirts of the town. When it burned down, no residential areas were at risk for anything but smoke inhalation, so we were evacuated for that, but not because if it exploded, it would take us with it.

  • Yep, but they had way more than they were supposed to, too.