Explosions

[Harry Babb]

Wow.....Was sitting right here in my living room about an hour ago when suddenly the house slightly trembled.....although it was strange I thought it was lingering thunder due to some weather in the area earlier this evening.

Then found out that a Natural Gas Barge in the Mobile river caught on fire and then exploded. The Mobile River is nearly 30 miles from where I live.

Early News reports say no one was killed but a few suffered burns.

The Mobile river has lots of barge traffic in that area and that is where Austal is building Navy Ships.


hb

[Bob H.]

Lots of things seem to be blowing up lately...Saw it on the news and wondered if you "felt" the after shock, those barges sure did some rocking, who had the camera in just the right place at just the right time? Amazing footage..BH

[Tony Meola]

Harry

Many years ago Moran Towing (tug boats up north here) was a client of mine. Right around the time everyone was trying to block the Navy from putting a Nuclear ship in Staten Island. The guys at Moran told me heck with the Nuclear ship, if they new what a barge with liquid Propane going up the river would do Manahatten if it ever exploded, they would not worry about the Nuclear Ships.

Gas can be bad news. I bet the rumble was felt 100 miles away.

[Harry Babb]

Correction......In my original post I stated Natural Gas.....not true

The barges, 2 barges lashed together, were transporting gasoline.

It appears that the barges had been emptied and were being prepared to reload when the fire broke out.

Three injured and are in very bad shape tonight.

hb

[Pete Fallon]

Harry & Bob,
The original barge that blew up was reported to be an empty CNG( Compressed Natural Gas) that was in dry dock.The others were gasoline barges that were docked nearby. My prayers go out to the3 injured in the blast. I don't like being around compressed gas barges, trucks or even small tanks, there was some good video from the local Mobile TV station on the fire and explosions.
When they first started bringing LNG tankers into Boston harbor back in the eartly 70's the antenna mast on the tanker had about 15' of clearance to the bottom of the Tobin Bridge and the insurance companies and Boston Fire dept did a study what would happen if the ship ever exploded. It's been a while since I read the report but it was something like a 7 square mile total devsitation 1.5 million people incinerated right away, and collateral damage for 25 miles around the surrounding cities. They used to close the entire harbor and have armed escort vessels when that ship comes into port, now I don't think they even let that ship into the harbor anymore.
The 2 pressure cooker bombs at the Boston Marathon were only 3 pounds of black powder.
I have been near a by a 20 pound propane tank that blew up and I had both of my eardrums ruptured and the shock wave felt like my insides were turned into jelly. Moral is don't screw with any type of compressed gas, even a good fart can have deadly results.
Pete Falon

[Rawleigh]

I read a book about CNG tankers in high school in the early '70's. Lots of destructive potential there. Also chemically it does not like water and is cold enough to crack steel. Then they put in a CNG pier at Clavert Cliffs Maryland and they go up the Bay. I don't like to be within a ten mile radius of them.

[Dug]

The most dangerous gas can is an empty one...

[IRGuy]

Rawleigh...

Back when I was a wet behind the ears recent college engineering grad I worked for Bechtel in Gaithersberg, MD.. I believe they have moved to Fredricksberg since then. I was involved in the design of the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant. If you had an LNG tanker blow up so close to a nuclear power plant the fallout would probably contaminate half the US, depending on which way the wind was blowing.

Coming from the chemical engineering community I try to be very safety conscious.. I have dealt with more than my share of explosions.. the worst being a propane tank truck catching fire in our plant.. then there were the molten sodium fires, and the high pressure high temperature oil leaks, and the methanol fires. Not to mention the gaseous hydrogen fires. In one case we were transferring some liquid sulfur dioxide when a valve broke and let a 2" pipe dump the stuff into the atmosphere at ground level. Luckily the breeze was blowing it away from me.. but we killed several acres of trees downstream of the leak.

These days I make it a point to stay away from hazardous stuff.