Speaking of Texas Ammonium Nitrate disasters

[cthulu2016]

There has been a lot of breaking deja vu this week. Hearing about a big Texas ammonium nitrate explosion cannot help but put one in mind of our biggest industrial accident.

The Texas City disaster was the deadliest industrial accident in U.S. history. The incident took place on April 16, 1947, and began with a mid-morning fire on board the French-registered vessel SS Grandcamp which was docked in the Port of Texas City. The fire detonated approximately 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate[1] and the resulting chain reaction of fires and explosions killed at least 581 people, including all but one member of the Texas City fire department.[2] These events also triggered the first ever class action lawsuit against the United States government, under the then-recently enacted Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), on behalf of 8,485 victims.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_Disaster

[Mopar151]

1. My late friend Wacky Willy

Was a merchant seaman in the '60's, on tankers in the Carribean, and was in the port at Texas City several times. Most of the evidence was long ago built over with the machinery of Big Oil, but he remembered a big cement silo "a mile or more" away from the port with a huge chunk missing at the top.

[cthulu2016]

2. A "perfect" disaster

Ship full of fertilizer and peanuts burning in the harbor. Everyone knows it's big trouble if they don't get it out, so all fire-fighters from miles around are on the dock when the ship explodes, throwing burning debris (burning peanuts) over the whole town while killing all the firemen and destroying all the fire equipment.

One of those two-part disasters, like the San Francisco earthquake/fire