Freight train derails in Illinois, residents evacuated due to ‘hazmat’ situation: report | Fox News
Freight train derails in Illinois prompting evacuation for residents (msn.com)
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Fortunately, not like this one on I-40 at the NM/AZ line:
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I’d have had to go home and change my underwear if I had been that driver
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And a related story:
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I am assuming that was propane escaping prior to detonation. That heat flash would be intense.
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Tough to say. That was a very dense cloud. I took a propane handling class a few years ago for reasons associated neither with selling propane nor propane related accessories. The fuel to air ration has to be between roughly two and ten percent. More than that and there’s not enough oxygen.
I’ve posted a couple of time about my time living in NOLA and working at Good Hope Refinery in NORCO:
One night there was an explosion that could be felt in New Orleans. My friend (whom I had gotten a job there after getting to know him during my disastrous year at NMU) and I saw the news about the refinery, and since I had never seen a refinery burn down before we decided to go have a look-see. We approched along the River Road and got as close as we could. Unfortunately my friend lay down on a bed of fire ants. It’s tough to say which burned worse, him or the tank farm.
What the following article doesn’t specify (becaue they didn’t yet know) is that a train of probably LPG was being loaded, and somehow fumes made it to the flare, ignited, and caused a huge explosion. Killed two dudes. A large metal bulding looked like the bomb scene from the movie Black Sunday,
The tank that burned was charred and deformed from the top to halfway down. Weirdly, the lower half was in pristine condition. We continued on a day later laying pipe from the refinery to the river like nothing had ever happened.
I enlisted less than a year later. It wasn’t the only incident. The money working 7-12’s was fantastic but it wasn’t worth it.
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