Liveblogged at Aggregator, including lots of video. I’ve been completely out of the loop today, so my apologies in getting to this one so belatedly.
Still photos
Joan Tintor, in the comments – “Since every one else is offering their theories, here’s mine: someone is going to blame Mike Harris.”
how do they get people to live in Toronto?
I saw an hour or so of coverage on this early this morning,then a while ago I saw another report.But I’ve yet to hear anyone even speculate as t the cause of the initial explosion. Has anyone heard about it?
Above-ground propane storage is not allowed in Europe, with good reason.
“How do they get people to live in Toronto?”
Well, our main selling point is that, unlike in the rest of Canada, you don’t have to marry your cousin 🙂
For the last dozen years I have been professionally engaged in developing software that is used by engineers to help prevent these sorts of disasters. And it helps. Yet it remains the case that a disaster is always, as my favourite risks analysis professor says, “twelve small problems that happen in just the right order”. In a year or so, there will be an engineering forensics report from the oversight folks we entrust this stuff to, and then we will probably have a good idea of what happened in this case. In the interim, speculation will run rampant 😉
By the way, for those SDA readers who are both interested in good engineering and good risks management, you will probably find the U.S. Chemical Safety Board’s videos interesting: http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=USCSB
What kind of city council allows this kind of facility in the middle of a heavily populated neighbourhood and on the edge of a military base?
Check this one out is the second blast, I think. These guy were close and you get a sense of the shock wave.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYijTFaxmow&feature=related
Huge evacuations…This is the third big explosion in the last month…The last one was smaller…just one gigantic high rise and all the people relocated for two to three months…The other one was the deisel in the basement of a downtown building…I was busy and didn’t follow the latter…and very little news about it…the other one was on the news because of all the relocation of tenants..
I told my daughter after the first one there would likely be more…just intuition…these are all just coincidental…of course..
Who puts huge propane train carrying tanks in city areas…THE IMBICILES IN THE INSANE ASYLUM OF TORONTO…..the comic tragedy of mulitcultural failure filled with no go areas and ethnic ghettos…
OUr thoughts and prayers are with the fallen fireman and his family.
One should ask which came first: the propane facility or the suburban develoment?
Well, our main selling point is that, unlike in the rest of Canada, you don’t have to marry your cousin 🙂
Yeah but only because you’re already married to your sister! 😉
She blowed up good, real good!
She blowed up good, real good!
This is the closest video I came across:
(Terrible camerawork and language warning)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbw_K8pfNfo&NR=1
iceFree: good vid. they’re about 2 kilometers away, and it’s strong enough to set off the car alarms. crazy.
“One should ask which came first: the propane facility or the suburban develoment?”
From most reports the propane facility is under 5 years old and residents were concerned at its placement.
You guys do realize they drive this stuff around YOUR town/city/whatever in biiiig trucks, right? Every day, they’re out there tooling around town with 5K gallons of bang bang on wheels. Funny how it never seems to blow up though, eh?
You also realize that your neighborhood gas station that fills your barbecue bottles has a big frackin’ tank on site as well.
Propane is common. Its all over the place. As is welding gas, as is oxygen and etc. It is difficult to set the stuff on fire accidentally. It can be done, but it isn’t done often.
Toronto does suck, and many morons who vote NDP do live there, but having the propane depot inside the city limits is not a sure sign of stupidity on someone’s part.
Alex: Ya scary shit, I did not even hear about it until this afternoon. Some amazing pics,and story’s coming out. glad the loss of life was so low.
Exactly, Phantom. People have no sense of proper risk analysis.
If the mayor is to be believed, often a dubious proposition, then the facility has been there for about 12 years.
The neighbourhood is relatively old. The facility sits beside a rail line with a graveyard on the other side of the rail line.
More interested in what happened. While I usually enjoy this board the Toronto Derangement Syndrome gets a little much sometimes. Lets wait and hear what the cause was.
It was a 15 minute drive from my house (non rush hour on regular streets …rush hour would have been 40 minutes), but thats a fair distance, we slept through it.
Be iterested to find out what happened to the firefighter as well.
As for it being on the edge of a military base….Downsview hasnt been used for anything serious in a long time….and its quite large, whatever barracks that might still be in use are a long way away. It is essentially a big abandoned airport.
The most interesting thing to me is how many of the call ins and eyewitnesses say as their first comment, I thought we were under attack…..I saw the first fireballs go up from the Mississauga derailment in 78 or 79 (million people evacuated) and I had similar thoughts, cold war and all.
Anyway, lucky there wasnt more damage.
I wonder if those whack jobs from the Westboro Baptist Church will make a stop here on their cross-Canada tour.
Fortunately no ‘statement’ from His Blondness yet…
Lot’s of relatives in T.O….thankfully none in that corner.
Robert Jago: The south end of Sarnia Ontario is entirely made up of refineries that make lots of stuff that goes boom, as a matter of fact those trucks Phantom talks about load there, all right next to a city. They have a warning system in place but if the wind is in the wrong direction I imagine it would be like God and a big can of raid.
Its amazing when you think of all the refineries and their storage tanks, the miles of underground pipelines and the enormous amounts of combustible, toxic material refined involving high heat and no major incidents.
I remember Malton burning, 1970 me thinks, some fool hit the gas main with a backhoe.
Toronto derangement syndrome indeed.
So far on this thread we have 19 posts, 15 people.
1 person remembers the dead firefighter. 1 remembers that human beings actually lived in the area. 4 get their quota of Toronto bashing done.
Lately it seems like SDA is more about Toronto hating than about principled conservatism.
I’ve been completely out of the loop today, so my apologies in getting to this one so belatedly.
huh? were your people in the field unable to cover the story for you?
afterall, with your immense traffic and piles of dough from advertising revenue, surely your toronto office could have covered this for you?
oh wait, you just pretend to matter.
Yeah, I slept right through it too. It didn’t really affect me until noon today, when I tried to leave the city to go back to my base. I was stuck in traffic for an hour or so.
And yeah, Downsview these days is mostly used by civilians – there’s a giant food redistribution facility, aircraft companies use it for testing, and the movie studios use it for storage and sets. The parts of the base that are still used by the military are mostly located on the opposite side of the base.
1) Downsview is a former base. There is a Bombarbier (formerly De Havilland) airplane factory there.
2) Air bases have all sorts of highly volatile stuff around. Jet fuel, armaments, etc. It is typically better stored, but seriously, thanks for the non sequitr.
3) Construction of the industrial parts vs the residential parts is at question. The area is a mix of industry and residential uses, but there are lots of similar facilities close to houses across the country.
Take a look here: http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCP&cp=r8nvxn8c9gqf&style=b&lvl=2&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=28284743&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&encType=1
No huge tanks, nothing bigger than any neighbourhood gas station with propane tanks, or even tanks at someone’s farm. This wasn’t a huge tank farm or an oil refinery style installation.
Some people need to seriously tone down the Toronto bashing. Hit out at the idiotic pols and assinine voting habits (I do all the time at work and in conservative meetings here in Toronto) but don’t denounce the whole place.
“seems like SDA is more about Toronto hating than about principled conservatism” Lori 10:05 PM
because Toronto represents everything that is wrong with liberalism and secular progressives
Toronto is an unmitigated disaster socially, economically, culturally, you name it – if it’s in Toronto, then it doesn’t function the way the rest of the universe does
you can be sure that the propane explosions could have been prevented – but Toronto’s city hall is busy these days conducting shade audits and protecting its citizens from the sun
None of this would happen if everybody stopped driving and we got all of our power from windmills.
You don’t have to be a fool to hit an underground utility.
Just Murphy’s choice.
Recently we had the “Explosion” on Secord ave. that was reported by the MSM as a Hydro overload in the basement of an Apartment Building and yet the damage was equal to a car-bomb blast , plus it was in a Pro-Taliban area of Toronto .
Now we have a “mystery” propane depot attacked and go up like a roman candle and it is said to be a minor fire that set-off some Tanks .
Com’on folks , Al-Qaeda has terror-cells in Canada and we all know that the Liberals would never admit that they made a mistake by Invading Afghanistan and now Occupying their Muslim nation to impose Human Rights and stop the Pedophilia and execusions of Gays and Lesbians.
The WTC 9/11 attack saw the area being sealed-off and then the Evidence was rushed out to hide the proof of a Inside-job by Bush and the Massad , this is a false-flag propane attack to deflect the Media from the Omar Khadr terrorist Al-Qaeda family living in canada on Welfare.
Time for a http://www.propaneTruth.org to uncover the conspiracy or alleged Bush/Harper plan to delay the US Election under the guise of a National Emergency.
“because Toronto represents everything that is wrong with liberalism and secular progressives”
Heh. I see the Wetboro gang is still in Canada, AND posting on SDA ….
This would not have happened if we had implemented a comprehensive, multi-tiered propane registry, leading to a ban, said his blondness..[sarc]
My sympathies to the fireman’s family..
Don’t ya’ just love it how humans rush to defend their pet theories even before there is sufficient data upon which to form specific theories in respect of any particular event? What a species we are!
they regularly drag a few hundred thousand gallons of propane thru downtown calgary. underneath buildings and everything. I believe its the only major city left in Canada that takes hazardous goods thru the downtown core.
I just want to find out what caused this, it amazes me the loss of life was so low.
As far as Toronto bashing goes, ya I would not want to live there. And I think Miller is a knob, but I do have friends in T.O. and did live there when I was younger.
I just hope this was an accident not some nut with an axe to grind.
Roger, do us all a favor: take up base jumping, or tax evasion, or going into Bloor Street bars and shouting “God hates fags!” Some other way of correcting the danger-deficiency that’s mucking up your metabolism other than Troootherism, OK? That schtick is getting damned old.
Regards,
Ric
jamaican pride day….an unsecured propane depot…so many west indian converts to islam…do i have to spell it out ?
“jamaican pride day….an unsecured propane depot…so many west indian converts to islam…do i have to spell it out ?”
No, no need, you’ve made it quite clear that you’re a bigoted moron, no need to come right out and say it.
Not necessarily, Alex. He could be bigoted and
not a moron. He could be not bigoted and a moron.
It is not required that he be both bigoted and a moron.
Well, well. Roger has shown himself at last. Getting tired of all the laborous misspelling, and trying to think up cute nics? I knew it was you all along. Can’t get a rise on Yahoo any more? How’s that girlfriend of yours? I don’t think you’ll last as long here as you did on some other sites.
Propane is not really more dangerous than any other hydrocarbon, if stored properly. It could be more prone to acts of sobotage. We forget how many hazardous locations there are in the average town. Every gas station is a potential bomb. My cousin has his own windmill, fairly close to his house, and his wife gets pretty worried during high winds.
If you assessed the combined risk of every house using candles and burning coal, and compared it with the single point risk of oil, gas, and electricity, the results would not favour the candles and coal.
[sigh]
Miller and his brain trust will be agitating for a ban on barbeques.
If not, a new police force to check each propane tank in Toronto yearly.
With the proper licenses and permits to be paid.
Come to think of it, I’ve never particularily liked people with gas.
I’ve heard there was no lose of life and hope that to be true.
I live 4 miles away. I heard a massive boom and then some smaller ones.
Since every one else is offering their theories, here’s mine: someone is going to blame Mike Harris.
Overheard on Global news this evening that the site that went up in flames stored a number of explosive gases such as NITROGEN and OXYGEN. The bimbo that made this statement didn’t hesitate at all when talking about the dangerous chemicals that were involved in the explosion. MSM at its finest.
gee kate, nothing new there.
you’re out of ‘the’ loop more often than not.
“”””You don’t have to be a fool to hit an underground utility.””””
“””””Just Murphy’s choice.”””””
Posted by: Mugs
Muggsy, I’v worked construction in good ol TO, and it is damn difficult to find those whom are not fools working in that industry, most are mafia wanna bee’s
I’v (contractor friend) also hit a gas line when replacing my sewer line(to the street) and no boom. I was 2 blocks from the malton fire shortly after it started, and witnesses said the fire could have been prevented if the hoe operator stopped rite after hitting the gas line.
I was nowhere near the scene at the time…
Condolences to the fireman’s family.
I’m surprised nobody has pegged the obvious culprit:
George W. Bush
Of course Begley could be just Lucy in Disguise.
For all you guys who think its crazy to have propane stored inside the city limits, better steer clear of Hamilton. The Air Liquide plant is right down there on Burlington St. next to a bunch of fuel and gas storage plants. That’s where they MAKE liquid oxygen and stuff. BOOM! Except, its been there for like 50 years or more and never had an issue that I know of.
BTW, do y’all know what sits right outside every single hospital in North America? Have a guess, kids.