We heard it in Clear Lake - I bet that is a good thirty miles off - and we also had a lot of the smoke drift this way. You could see the mushroom cloud from here - it looked like someone had nuked the Galleria. It was reported people in League City heard it as well, which is a good forty miles away. I bet the guy locking the doors at the plant needed a clean pair of pants after that baby went off.

woo eee! Texas City revisited! I worked construction in the refinery jungle in Houston in the late 70's, it was quite a jungle there.

I usually take my yankee guests to Texas City, because it is one of those things you will remember your whole life, like seeing the Grand Canyon. It is absolutely like landing on another planet. Towering jumbles of spagetti pipes that go on for city block after city block. The worst refinery disaster occured there in the forties when a ship loaded with ammonia nitrate caught fire. The fire department was at the ship fighting a diesel fuel fire. Unbeknownst to them the diesel fuel was also leaking on the ammonia nitrate in the cargo hold, the combination of which creates TNT. The resulting explosion killed most of the fire department and leveled an elementary school, killing most of the kids inside. The fire burned for days, burning down most of Texas City in the process. We really know how to throw a good disaster around here.

ammonia nitrate makes a hell of an explosive: just ask the folks in the Murrow Federal Building in OKC.

A true monument to human error. They used a tanker to ship bulk quantity of diesel fuel and ammonia nitrate on the same boat, in order to save the cost of shipping it on two boats. The tanker had two 20,000 bbl tanks filled with diesel fuel, and tons of nitrate in 50lb paper sacks stacked up in the space between the tanks, one of which sprung a leak, soaking the nitrate for hours. You could not have built a better bomb on purpose.

McVey's dad didn't work there did he?

I beleive McVeigh used nitromethane drag race fuel instead of diesel. He also ran the fertilizer thru a grinder first to turn it into a fine powder. He was man who really took pride in his work. You only get that kind of know-how from one place......

I also read how happy the Viet Cong were when we sent rice farmers tons of Ammonia Nitrate to them for fertilizer. One story recounted how an unexploded bomb was found wrapped in the fert bags imprinted with "This product is a gift from the people of the United States!" on it. Somewhat ironic, perhaps constructed by a guerilla known as Sienfield Sung May.