30 tons of explosive chemicals lost in rail shipment
About 60,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate, a chemical used as fertilizer and in explosives, went missing in April on a rail transit from Wyoming to California and has still not been found, officials said.
Dyno Nobel, an explosives manufacturing company, notified the federal government of the loss, saying in a statement it was investigating what happened during the nearly two-week journey.
The company said the train car containing the material was sealed when it left a production site in Cheyenne, Wyo, and the seals were “still intact” when it arrived in Saltdale, California.
“The initial estimate is that a leak occurred through the bottom gate of the train car during transit,” the statement said.
A May 10 report to the National Response Center, a federal emergency call center for railroad incidents, said the train car left Wyoming on April 12 and arrived in California empty.
Dyno Nobel said the train car was transported to Wyoming for further investigation and that he had “limited control” over the train’s activity while the cargo was being transported.
Kristen South, a spokeswoman for the Union Pacific railroad company, said in a statement that the company’s investigation was in its early stages.
“The fertilizer is designed for soil application and rapid soil uptake,” said Ms South. “If the loss is due to a leak in a railcar during transit from origin to destination, the release should not pose a risk to public health or the environment.”
The company said it does not suspect any criminal or malicious activity was involved in the cargo’s disappearance.
The Federal Railroad Administration and the California Public Utilities Commission were also investigating, That reports KQED, a radio station in San Francisco. The agencies could not be reached for comment on Sunday.
Ammonium nitrate is mainly used as fertilizer. It is also used to make first aid products such as cold packs, and as an explosive in mining and construction. This is reported by the Ministry of Homeland Security.
The chemical is relatively harmless on its own, but can explode if added to a fuel source and subjected to heat and pressure.
“Ammonium nitrate is certainly a known disaster risk,” said Fred Millar, an independent expert on chemical disasters.
Ammonium nitrate was used to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people.
In 2013, 15 people were killed and more than 260 others injured in West, Texas, after ammonium nitrate exploded at a fertilizer plant. Federal investigators said in 2016 that the fire that caused the explosion was deliberately lit.
In August 2020, more than 2,000 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in a warehouse in the port of Beirut, Lebanon exploded, killing people. more than 200 peopleinjuring another 6,000 and causing extensive damage to the city.