Massive explosion at a fertilizer plant in Waco, TX

[SnoopLoggyDog]

Freak'ed me at the first glimpse of this thread...thought it happened again...huuuh, just the old one

Same thing happened to me. I did not see anything on any of the news outlets, and was wondering how they could have missed it?

We have two large fertilizer facilities near where I work. If one of them ever blows up, it is going to make for one heck of a mess.

 

[wagyu52]

Not likely a fertilizer plant around here would go up like that. It was the Ammonium Nitrate that made the boom, it's used as a source of nitrogen, also the same stuff used in Oklahoma City. I'm not sure you can even buy it in Indiana not to mention we have better, cheaper products available that are not so explosive.

 

[tmschuller]

You can buy it... online and some co-op's still have it.

 

[Alamo]

Nope. They offered a puny 50K reward for info. Given the size and devastation of the explosion, I'm guessing they are pulling this info out of their asses. There was nothing left at the site but a huge crater. I can't see how any evidence survived.

Given that it would seem that physical evidence is likely to be minimal, and the passage of time, I still think that if they really know it was deliberate then it's because someone finally talked. Rewards bring out people who think they won't get in trouble and can claim the cash. People who are guilty, especially of mass murder and destruction, are not going to talk voluntarily. But a long term investigation that sorts out who hates who and who owes who money and all that might dredge up enough to lean on someone who is offered a chance to reduce penalties if they tell what they know, especially if others are involved.

Going down the physical evidence route, the evidence survived in some form, it was just transformed. Laboratories don't really work at the speed of CSI, they may have been continually or periodically processing small amounts of debris from the site looking for chemicals and other things that should not have been there, that would indicate a deliberate cause to the explosion.

 

[Alamo]

Ah. So it is analytically based:


IN DEPTH: Details on cause of West fire - KXXV-TV News Channel 25 - Central Texas News and Weather for Waco, Temple, Killeen |

"All reasonable, accidental and natural fire scenarios were hypothesized, considered, tested and eliminated as being fire causes,” said ATF Special Agent in Charge from the Houston Field Division Robert Elder.
The only hypothesis that couldn’t be eliminated and was later confirmed by extensive testing was incendiary, according to Elder.