Fire spreads to overloaded fireworks plant

Leto

Newcomer
http://www.itv.com/news/index_859254.html

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1 fireman dead, 80+ wounded, 2000 evacuated, 350 houses destroyed. The blasts were heard 200 km's away :oops:
 
Just saw that on the TV news - extordinary. It's like when you are a kid and you wonder what would happen if all the fireworks in the box went off at once X 1 million. They reckon there might be 2,000 tons of fireworks stored there! :oops:
 
Is this old, or is this the second time in recent memory this happened to the Dutch?

I watched a view years ago of a guy with a camcorder who *from far away* got taken out when a *massive* mushroom cloud leaving explosion at a fireworks fire sent a blast wave along the ground (you could see it approaching) and the camera gets sent flying.


Nothing compares to the explosion of the solid rocket fuel plant in the US tho. :)
 
Guden Oden said:
METRIC tons too - those are even bigger than the other, obsolete variety... :oops:
No, actually it's the other way around
1 ton = 1.016 metric tons

Unless you are talking to Americans who just can't get weights and measures correct :)
 
You really have to wonder whether there were any checks at all on how much fireworks they were storing.

btw. tons? It's Mg!
 
Xmas said:
btw. tons? It's Mg!

Too many syllables. :p

Btw, what happened after the fires were put out, you Danish guys? We don't hear about this in the news anymore across the strait. :(
 
Guden Oden said:
Xmas said:
btw. tons? It's Mg!

Too many syllables. :p


Btw, what happened after the fires were put out, you Danish guys? We don't hear about this in the news anymore across the strait. :(
Well quite a few families are without a home now, luckily, no deaths apart from that one fireman.. (18 wounded, 85 was taken to hospitals for a check-up).

Now they (the politicians / authorities) are talking about moving all the 'explosive dangerous' industries out of the industry / resident areas, which is a good thing ..

Then it turns out most of said companies (the ones dealing with fireworks anyway), have already filed applications for moving thier producation and storage, but the reason it have not yet happened is because the same authorities have not processed said applications...


But as with most things we try to look at it constructivly and if anything this incident will make the process of getting approvals for the, dangerous industries to be moved to a 'further away from populated areas' applications to go through the 'system' somewhat faster..

For the really interested here is the short story on how it all happened (as accuratly as I know anyway).

While unloading (or loading) a container with fireworks a box was dropped, this wouldn't normally be a problem, but for some unlucky reason a spark (or something else) made the fireworks in it ignite.
Neither would that noramlly be a problem, but it happened just outside the container, and before employees could put out the initial fire, that caught fire aswell..

This is the point where the fire brigade came in, as far as I aware there was some (3?) containers nearby the one on fire, and while the firemen tried to keep them cooled down one of them exploded (which sadly killed one of those firemen), and because of that the firemen gave up on trying to stop the impending disaster and everything after that is kinda history..
 
Is anyone at the fireworks plant going to get prosecuted because of this mess? Didn't they store a lot more stuff than they had permit for?
 
Actually not, they had permit to store 300 tons of explosives, which was what they had.

The 2000 tons figures that the media talks about is including non-explosive materials.
 
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