From the BBC:



Have a look at footage of the huge blast here.

So who broke a mirror in America at the weekend? Come on, own up.

Holy crap that's a huge explosion!!!

My concerns are how many firefighters got caught up in that explosion. The fire was blazing away for some time, which could have increased the numbers of firemen caught up in the explosion. I suspect that the fatalities will be high and there will probably be a long wrangle paying out to the victims who died in this.

This graphic showing the location of the plant in relation to the town demonstrates why there were so many casualties.

I can't believe how close the plant was to the town; were they insane?

I've seen the craters left by fertiliser bombs that were only a few hundred lbs worth, and those were feckin' wide and deep

I never understood such planning. Though many communities are desperate for work, so will allow dangerous plants to be built within residential areas.


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It is also often the other way round. In Osnabrück I worked for a plastic manufacturer (raw material cellulose plastic, not finished products) and the factory was built outside the city limits in the 19th Century, now it is much nearer the town centre than the outskirts! They had to move, because the city removed their licence to manufacture within the city.

Likewise, where I now work was an old slaughter house. In the 90s, the town decided it had expanded so much around the slaughter house, that they didn't want thousands of pigs transported through the middle of a residential district and slaughtered there... So it was converted into an office specialising in consultancy to the pig industry.

Yes but those are cases of the town expanding around the plants, though really the town planners should have blocked development around those plants. I doubt that this is the case in this particular situation. Looking at the internet you can see that there are discussions on why there are no zoning restrictions in small towns. Placing it 2000 feet away from any residential and commercial areas when the town is small really should not be a problem.

Americans have always had lax safety standards as high ones cost money. Their oil industry is a prime example.

Yes but the costs will be picked up by society eventually. It is thought that after Flixborough the UK government relaxed temperature limits for the processing of animal proteins into foodstuff that caused the spread of prions from sheep to cattle in their feed. We ended up with BSE as a result.

In the US companies lobby extensively for lax reductions as it is far more cost effective than actually complying with any regulations. It has been estimated that the lobbying by banks had a far higher rate of return than any of their normal activities. That would also apply to industrial companies. It would not surprise me that this plant was owned by a subsidiary which owned nothing else. So if this plant exploded the company would go bust and the owners would not have to pay out compensation.


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