Fun time in Houston tonight - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

KirkVining · #1 12-03-2004, 08:00 PM

One of our chemical plants just exploded spectacularly. You could feel and hear the blast all over town. Big mushroom cloud. Doesn't look like terrorism but has freaked out the whole place. There was a shift working in the plant at the time but there is no word of casualties yet. Looks like the place is going to burn to the ground. If you use a lot of car wax, you might want to stock up.

engatwork · #2 12-03-2004, 08:40 PM

khou.com has some live feed.
Seems it is the second blaze at the plant within the past year.
Chemicals can be dangerous ya'll.

KirkVining · #3 12-03-2004, 09:41 PM

Pretty unusual fire. Seems natural gas seeped into a huge above ground tank of some precursor chemical used in wax products. The tank went with a hell of a boom that was heard 30 miles outside of Houston, and after that everything else in the area got splashed with hot burning wax, so warehouses. etc all started going up as well. They are not even bothering to fight it, they are just going to let it burn itself out. I took a drive out to see it, and given the size of the fire and the continuing explosions, its a wonder no one got hurt.

Kuan · #4 12-03-2004, 09:57 PM

We had a fire yesterday at a butter plant in New Ulm, Minnesota.

Quote:

Nearly 180 employees of the AMPI plant, one of the nation's largest butter packagers, were put out of work at least temporarily after a fire that began in a cooling storage area Wednesday night destroyed about half the building, sending an estimated 1 million pounds of melted butter coursing down city streets and sewers in this southern Minnesota city.

Quote:

The butter that escaped eventually worked its way to the Minnesota River, several blocks away.

Neve said MPCA officials arrived on the scene late Wednesday. By midday Thursday they had, through the use of containment booms, recovered some of the butter that had made its way to the water.

"Some butter got to the river, but we got some of it back," Neve said. "The good news is, we do not consider this to be a significant environmental problem."

More here: http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/5115140.html

Pete Geither · #5 12-04-2004, 05:58 AM

Our son is a chemical engineer at one of the plants in the Houston area. I don't think they make waxes though, but I haven't talked to him yet. Sure hope he wasn't involved.

engatwork · #6 12-04-2004, 09:02 AM

Quote:

Seems natural gas seeped into a huge above ground tank

hmmm, it'll be interesting to hear the rest of this story. Unless the tank was built to store natural gas I can't think why anyone would intentionally pipe it to it

. This raised some eyebrows around this house. Keep us posted kv.

MS Fowler · #7 12-04-2004, 10:29 AM

Chemicals can be dangerous ya'll.

Isn't that true!
I did some construction inspections a few years ago on an addition to a local cosmetics plant. This addition was STOUT. 12" CMU walls, poured solid with grout. I asked about it. I was told it was to house a dangerous process and it was meant to contain any possible explosion. Yesh, I want to work there!

BobK · #8 12-05-2004, 11:56 PM

I always liked the roof in our oil storage room at a place I used to work. The roof was designed to lift off and then settle back pretty much where it came from. Sort of a presure relief valve. I tried not to be in there much. And really, mostly we just had 90w gear oil in there.