When heated, ammonium nitrate decomposes non-explosively into nitrous oxide and water vapor; however, it can be induced to decompose explosively by detonation into oxygen, nitrogen, and water vapor. Large stockpiles of the material can be a major fire risk due to their supporting oxidation, and may also detonate, as happened in the Texas City disaster of 1947 which led to major changes in the regulations for storage and handling.
There are two major classes of incidents resulting in explosions:
In the first case, the explosion happens by the shock induced detonation. The initiation happens by an explosive charge going off in the mass, by the detonation of a shell thrown into the mass, or by detonation of an explosive mixture in contact with the mass. Examples are Kriewald, Morgan, Oppau, Tessenderlo, and Traskwood.
In the second case, the explosion results from a fire that spreads into the ammonium nitrate (AN) itself (Texas City, Brest, Tianjin, Beirut) or to a mixture of an ammonium nitrate with a combustible material during the fire. The fire must be confined at least to a degree for successful transition from a fire to an explosion (a phenomenon known as "deflagration to detonation transition", or DDT). Pure, compact AN is stable and very difficult to initiate.
Ammonium nitrate decomposes in temperatures above 169°C (336°F). Pure AN is stable and will stop decomposing once the heat source is removed, but when catalysts are present, the reaction can become self-sustaining (known as self-sustaining decomposition, or SSD). This is a well-known hazard with some types of NPK fertilizers and is responsible for the loss of several cargo ships.
Timeline of major incidents
The column AN states the amount of ammonium nitrate consumed in the disaster in metric tonnes.
In an evaporating pan of the Repauno works, du Pont Co., 1,800 kilograms (4,000lb) of ammonium nitrate exploded, possibly caused by a clogged air lance leading to overheating of the nitrate. 1 man was killed and 12 were injured.[1]
The Great Explosion: On April 2, 1916, at 14:20, a factory in Uplees, Faversham, exploded after a fire spread to a store of 25 tons of TNT and 700 tons of ammonium nitrate. The blast at the Explosives Loading Company killed 115 people and shattered windows in Southend-on-Sea across the Thames Estuary while the tremor was felt in Norwich.[2]
An Aetna Chemical Co. plant suffered an explosion of 1,400 kilograms (3,000lb) of ammonium nitrate, while concentrating it in a pan by evaporation. The speculated cause was impurities within the nitric acid used to produce the ammonium nitrate. Six men were killed and eight injured. The shock wave was felt at a distance of 11 kilometres (7mi).[1]
On July 26, 1921, in this railway town (now in Poland) workers tried to dislodge 30tonnes of ammonium nitrate that had aggregated (solidified into one mass) in two wagons. When mining explosives were used on this solid mass the wagons exploded and killed nineteen people.[citation needed]
Explosion at BASF plant Oppau: Another attempt at disaggregation of a fertilizer mix with industrial explosives caused the death of 561 people and left more than 2,000 injured. The explosion happened at 7:32a.m. The fertilizer was a 50:50mixture of ammonium nitrate and ammonium sulfate and the factory had used this method of disaggregation over 20,000 times without incident. It is thought that, on this occasion, poor mixing had led to certain parts of the mass containing more ammonium nitrate than others. Only 450tonnes exploded, out of 4500tonnes of fertilizer stored in the warehouse.[3][4]
1924 Nixon Nitration Works disaster: On March 1, 1924, at 11:15a.m., a fire and several large explosions destroyed a warehouse containing 2,200 kilograms (4,800lb) of ammonium nitrate at the Nixon Nitration Works. The explosiveness of the product was perhaps enhanced, as it had been prepared using nitric acid that had previously been used for the production of TNT.[1]
On April 4, 1925, and May 3, 1925, two carloads, each containing 220 barrels of ammonium nitrate, were dispatched from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and caught fire in transportation. The barrels had been stored in a warehouse with varying humidity for 6 years, so it is believed that they were ignited by friction with their nitrate-impregnated manila paper lining. Other shipments were reportedly more successful.[5]
Texas City disaster: The cargo ship Grandcamp was being loaded on April 16, 1947, when a fire was detected in the hold: at this point, 2,300tons of ammonium nitrate in sacks were already aboard.[8] The captain responded by closing the hold and pumping in pressurised steam. At 9:12, the ship exploded, killing several hundred people and setting fire to another vessel, the High Flyer, which was moored 250metres away and which contained 1,050tonnes of sulfur and 960 tons of ammonium nitrate. The Grandcamp explosion also created a powerful earthshock that broke windows as far as 64 kilometres (40mi) away and knocked two small planes flying at 460 metres (1,500ft) out of the sky. The High Flyer exploded the next day, after having burned for sixteen hours. 500tonnes of ammonium nitrate on the quayside also burned, but without exploding, probably because it was less tightly packed. All but one member of the Texas City fire department died.
The Norwegian cargo ship Ocean Liberty was loaded with 3,309tonnes of ammonium nitrate and various flammable products when it caught fire at 12:30 July 28, 1947. The captain ordered the hold to be sealed and pressurised steam was pumped in. As this did not stop the fire, the vessel was towed out of the harbour at 14:00, and exploded at 17:00. The explosion caused 29 deaths and serious damage to the port of Brest.[1][9][10]
An A.W. Higgins Company plant was destroyed by a spontaneous heating in a pile of mixed fertilizer. Stored in the plant were 240 tons of ammonium nitrate.[1]
A fire was detected on the Finnish cargo ship Tirrenia on January 23, 1953, while it was carrying ammonium nitrate. Attempts to extinguish the fire with steam were unsuccessful, and the ship was abandoned before it exploded later in the night.[11]
The Roseburg Blast: A truck carrying dynamite and 4.5 tons of ammonium nitrate caught fire early in the morning of August 7, 1959. The explosion happened at 1:14a.m. and killed 14 people and injured 125 more. Several blocks of downtown Roseburg were destroyed. The accident is locally referred to as "The Blast".[12]
On December 17, 1960, a 96 freight car train suffered partial derailment, in which the last 23 cars were derailed. The derailed cars included: four fuel oil tank cars, two tank cars of gasoline, three tank cars of petroleum oil, four cars of lube oil drums, three cars of liquid fertilizer, one car of fuming nitric acid and two cars of fertilizer grade ammonium nitrate. In this particular accident, neither car of ammonium nitrate exploded.[13] However, the nitric acid reacted with the fuel oil, possibly creating nitrated aromatic compounds, whose explosion resulted in the spread of the ammonium nitrate material around the incident site.[14]
On January 9, 1963, an explosion at the Typpi Oy industrial site in the Takalaanila neighborhood of Oulu killed ten people. The accident happened past midnight, at 12:54 AM. The blast shattered hundreds of windows in the city center, over two kilometers away, and hurled bricks and chunks of concrete several kilometers away. The blast was heard 45km (28mi) away, and registered by the seismographs at the Sodankylä geophysical observatory, over 270km (170mi) away.[15] The cause of the explosion was the ignition of ammonium nitrate used as raw material for fertilizer and explosives.
In the 1972 Taroom explosion, a truck carrying 12 tons of ammonium nitrate experienced an electrical fault and caught fire north of Taroom, Queensland. After the driver stopped and parked the burning truck, two brothers from a nearby cattle property who saw the fire rode up on motorbikes to assist. The three men were killed when the truck exploded at around 18:15. The explosion burnt out more than 800 hectares (2,000 acres) of surrounding bushland, and left a deep crater where the truck had been parked. A memorial to the three men was unveiled at the accident site in 2013.[16][17][18][19]
1988 Kansas City explosion: On November 29, 1988, at 4:07 AM two trailers containing approximately 23,000kg (50,000lb) of the explosive ANFO (ammonium nitrate with fuel oil) exploded at a construction site located near the 87th street exit of Highway 71 in Kansas City, Missouri. The explosives were to be used in the blasting of rock while constructing Highway 71. The result of the explosions were the deaths of six firemen from the Kansas City Fire Department's Pumper Companies 30 and 41. A second blast occurred 40 minutes later, although all fire crews had been pulled back at this time. The blasts created two craters, each approximately 30 metres (100ft) wide and 2.4 metres (8ft) deep. The explosions also shattered windows within a 16-kilometre (10mi) area and could be heard 64 kilometres (40mi) away. It was later determined that the explosions were acts of arson, set by individuals embroiled in a labor dispute with the construction company contracted to build the highway.[20][21]
At 9:45 am, 2 August 1994, 11 workers were killed when the sensitised AN emulsion plant they were working on exploded at the Porgera Gold Mine. The fatal explosion involved at most a few tonnes of explosive. A larger explosion of about 80 tonnes of ammonium nitrate emulsion, ANE, an emulsion of ammonium nitrate, fuel and water, UN 3375) was caused by fires under storage facilities at the site at 11:02 AM. There were no fatalities in the second explosion because the site had been evacuated. A mushroom cloud was seen to rise.[22]
Port Neal fertilizer plant explosion: At about 6:06 AM on December 13, 1994, two explosions rocked the Port Neal, Iowa, ammonium nitrate processing plant operated by Terra Industries. Four people were killed and 18 injured. Approximately 5,700 tons of anhydrous ammonia were released and releases of ammonia continued for six days after the explosions. Groundwater under the processing plant was contaminated by chemicals released as a result of the blast. The timing of the explosion occurred prior to the start of the arrival of the 8:00 AM shift personnel, or the death toll might have been larger.[23][24]
At 23:03 on January 6, 1998, the Xinghua Fertilizer company had a series of explosions in the plant. About 27.6 tons of ammonium nitrate liquor was in a container there. The explosion claimed 22 lives, with a further 56 wounded. The explosion was officially announced as an accident.[25][citation needed]
2001 Shijiazhuang bombings: A man motivated by hatred of his ex-wife and her family detonated ammonium nitrate bombs at four locations across Shijiazhuang, killing 108 people and injuring 38 others.[26]
Mafang Village explosion: On July 16, 2001, an embittered villager ignited ammonium nitrate explosives in a rival's warehouse. The explosion leveled much of the village and killed at least 89 people, and injured 98 others.[27]
AZF: On September 21, 2001, at 10:15 AM, in the AZF (Azote de France) fertiliser factory in Toulouse, France, an explosion occurred in a warehouse where the off-specification granular AN was stored flat, separated by partitions. About 200–300 tonnes were said to be involved in the explosion, resulting in 31 people dead and 2,442 injured, 34 of them seriously. The blast wave shattered windows up to 3km (1.9mi) away, and the resulting crater was 7 m deep and 60 m wide. The exact cause remains unknown. The material damage was estimated at 2.3billioneuros. France's Environment Minister initially suggested the explosion "may have been a terrorist attack" as it occurred soon after the September 11 attacks and one deceased worker may have had militant views.
The fertilizer storage facility of Fertiberia held a self-sustained decomposition (SSD) fire in January 2003. The fire was controlled after most of the material was removed by mechanical means.[citation needed]
A fire broke out in Saint-Romain-en-Jarez (Loire) in a barn, which at the time of the accident contained a gasoline-powered forklift, a battery charger, two 13-kg gas bottles, miscellaneous farm machinery, 500kg of quicklime, 500 wooden crates, 6,000 to 7,000 plastic crates, and between 3 and 5 tonnes of ammonium nitrate packaged in big bags. Bales of hay and straw were being stored on the mezzanine and ≈500kg apples kept in the cold storage rooms. The fire started around 3 PM, and fire-fighters were notified of the blaze at 4:02 PM. They arrived on the scene at 4:23 and started to extinguish the fire. At 5:12 PM the explosion occurred. Twenty-six people were injured from the blast, most of them fire-fighters.[28]
A truck carrying 25tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer exploded half an hour after a traffic accident on March 9, 2004 at 12:45, killing two people and injuring five others. The explosion, which could be heard at a distance of several kilometers caused a crater five metres deep.[29]
Mihăileşti explosion: A truck carrying 20 tonnes of ammonium nitrate tipped over on the European road E85 near Mihăileşti at 4:57 AM on May 24, 2004. Shortly afterwards, a fire started in the cabin. Two reporters got to the site of the accident and started filming while firemen were trying to stop the fire. Around 5:50 AM the truck exploded, killing 18 and wounding 13 people. A crater 6.5 meters deep and 42 meters in diameter was formed by the explosion.
Ryongchon disaster: A freight train carrying ammonium nitrate exploded in this important railway town near the Chinese border on April 22, 2004 at around 13:00, killing 162 people and injuring over 3,000 others. The train station was destroyed, as were most buildings within 500metres, and nearly 8,000 homes were destroyed or damaged. Two craters of about ten metres in depth were seen at the site of the explosion. The authorities blamed "human error" for the explosion, although rumours persist that it was in fact an attempt to assassinate the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, who was due to be passing through the station at the time.
The NPK fertilizer cargo of the ship Ostedijk sustained a self-sustained decomposition (SSD) fire for 11 days. The ship carried a total of 6012 tonnes of NPK. Cargo hold 2, where the decomposition occurred, contained 2627 tonnes of fertilizer. NPK fertilizer contains about 15% ammonium nitrate. The fire plume reached 10 m in diameter and several hundred meters in length. Special water spears were inserted inside the cargo to extinguish the fire.[30]
On September 9, 2007, at around 20:00, near Monclova, Coahuila, México, a pickup truck lost control and crashed into a trailer loaded with 22 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil explosives (ANFO) leaving three occupants in the pick-up truck dead in the crash. A fire then started in the trailer's cabin and at around 20:43, a huge explosion occurred, resulting in 28 deaths and around 150 more people injured. A crater 9m (30ft) wide and 1.8m (6ft) deep was created due to the explosion.[31][32]
A plant in Bryan, Texas (El Dorado Chemical Company), which processes ammonium nitrate into fertilizer, caught fire at about 11:40 AM on July 30, 2009. Over 80,000 residents in the Bryan/College Station area were asked to evacuate south of town due to the toxic fumes this fire generated. Texas A&M University provided shelter at Reed Arena, a local venue on campus. Only minor injuries were reported.[33][34]
2011 Norway attacks: A government building was bombed with a truck carrying ammonium nitrate by terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, killing 8 people and injuring 210+ people before opening fire at a summer camp at Utøya, killing 67 and injuring 32 before being arrested. In all 77 people were killed, including two indirectly, and 320 people were injured all together in the attacks.
West Fertilizer Company explosion: A fertilizer company in West, Texas, caught fire. At around 19:50, ammonium nitrate stored there exploded, leveling roughly 80 homes and a middle school. 133 residents of a nearby nursing home were trapped in the ruins. In all, 15 were killed, and about 200 injured. There were reports that the facility had stored more ammonium nitrate than it was allowed to, without regulation by the Department of Homeland Security.[35][36]
A truck carrying 56 tonnes rolled on a rural road, exploding shortly after the driver was rescued. There were two explosions, at 22:11 and 22:12, and they were heard 30km (19mi) away with debris being thrown 2km (1.2mi), it totally destroyed a highway bridge. The driver and six firemen were injured.[37][38]
2015 Tianjin explosions: Nitrocellulose stored at a hazardous goods warehouse spontaneously combusted after becoming overly hot and dry, resulting in a fire that 40 minutes later, at around 23:30, triggered the detonation of about 800 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored nearby. 110 emergency personnel and 55 residents and employees were killed, while eight are missing[needs update]. 798 people were injured.[39] There was extensive damage to structures and goods at the port, damage to surrounding apartment blocks, and severe damage to a railway station. On August 15, 2015, there were again 8 consecutive explosions, at around 23:40.
2020 Beirut explosion: On August 4, a major fire broke out in a Port of Beirut warehouse and spread to 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate which had been impounded and stored for six years after it was seized from an abandoned ship in 2014.[40][41] The explosion happened at 18:10, causing immense damage throughout the entire city from the shock wave that was reportedly so intense it was felt in Cyprus, an island about 250 kilometres (160mi) north-west of Lebanon.[42] A giant orange cloud was seen following the detonation. As of August 20, 2020, there are at least 6500 confirmed injuries and over 200 confirmed deaths.[43][44] According to Beirut's city governor, up to 300,000 people have lost their homes.[43] The yield of the explosion in terms of TNT equivalent mass was estimated to be 0.5 kilotons as a "best estimate" and 1.12 kilotons as a "reasonable upper bound estimate", a study from the Blast and Impact Research Group at the University of Sheffield shows.[45]
A fire which began January 31, 2022 destroyed the Winston Weaver Company fertilizer plant in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. An hour after firefighters arrived it was determined a railroad car near the building contained 82 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, and after studying the West Fertilizer Company explosion, those in charge learned from plant officials that more than 450 tonnes of ammonium nitrate were stored in the plant. Firefighters were evacuated and for a one-point-six-kilometre (1mi) radius around the plant, residents were asked to leave[46] because city fire chief Trey Mayo feared "one of the worst explosions in U.S. history". Residents were able to return home February 3, though a mandatory evacuation was considered. By February 7, investigators could enter the plant.[47]
2024 Bruce Highway explosion: A utility vehicle crashed head-on with a truck transporting 42.5 tonnes of ammonium nitrate near Bororen, Queensland killing the driver of the utility vehicle and seriously injuring the truck driver.[48][49] The crash caused the tanker to leak ammonium nitrate onto the Bruce Highway which caught fire shortly after. First responders noted that the leaked chemicals were on fire and ordered an evacuation of every person in a 2.5 kilometer radius of the crash.[50] First responders made the decision to not extinguish the fire because of the inherent risk. The ammonium nitrate exploded almost 5 hours later.[51]
Dynamite is an explosive made of nitroglycerin, sorbents, and stabilizers. It was invented by the Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, Northern Germany, and was patented in 1867. It rapidly gained wide-scale use as a more robust alternative to the traditional black powder explosives. It allows the use of nitroglycerine's favorable explosive properties while greatly reducing its risk of accidental detonation.
An explosive is a reactive substance that contains a great amount of potential energy that can produce an explosion if released suddenly, usually accompanied by the production of light, heat, sound, and pressure. An explosive charge is a measured quantity of explosive material, which may either be composed solely of one ingredient or be a mixture containing at least two substances.
Trinitrotoluene, more commonly known as TNT (and more specifically 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene, and by its preferred IUPAC name 2-methyl-1,3,5-trinitrobenzene), is a chemical compound with the formula C6H2(NO2)3CH3. TNT is occasionally used as a reagent in chemical synthesis, but it is best known as an explosive material with convenient handling properties. The explosive yield of TNT is considered to be the standard comparative convention of bombs and asteroid impacts. In chemistry, TNT is used to generate charge transfer salts.
2,4,6-Trinitrophenylmethylnitramine or tetryl (C7H5N5O8) is an explosive compound used to make detonators and explosive booster charges.
Ammonium nitrate is a chemical compound with the formula NH4NO3. It is a white crystalline salt consisting of ions of ammonium and nitrate. It is highly soluble in water and hygroscopic as a solid, although it does not form hydrates. It is predominantly used in agriculture as a high-nitrogen fertilizer.
ANFO ( AN-foh) (or AN/FO, for ammonium nitrate/fuel oil) is a widely used bulk industrial high explosive. It consists of 94% porous prilled ammonium nitrate (NH4NO3) (AN), which acts as the oxidizing agent and absorbent for the fuel, and 6% number 2 fuel oil (FO). The use of ANFO originated in the 1950s.
The 1947 Texas City disaster was an industrial accident that occurred on April 16, 1947, in the port of Texas City, Texas, United States, located in Galveston Bay. It was the deadliest industrial accident in U.S. history and one of history's largest non-nuclear explosions.
Amatol is a highly explosive material made from a mixture of TNT and ammonium nitrate. The British name originates from the words ammonium and toluene. Similar mixtures were known as Schneiderite in France. Amatol was used extensively during World War I and World War II, typically as an explosive in military weapons such as aircraft bombs, shells, depth charges, and naval mines. It was eventually replaced with alternative explosives such as Composition B, Torpex, and Tritonal.
The Port of Beirut is the main port in Lebanon on the eastern part of the Saint George Bay on Beirut's northern Mediterranean coast, west of the Beirut River. It is one of the largest and busiest ports on the Eastern Mediterranean.
There have been many extremely large explosions, accidental and intentional, caused by modern high explosives, boiling liquid expanding vapour explosions (BLEVEs), older explosives such as gunpowder, volatile petroleum-based fuels such as gasoline, and other chemical reactions. This list contains the largest known examples, sorted by date. An unambiguous ranking in order of severity is not possible; a 1994 study by historian Jay White of 130 large explosions suggested that they need to be ranked by an overall effect of power, quantity, radius, loss of life and property destruction, but concluded that such rankings are difficult to assess.
The Oppau explosion occurred on September 21, 1921, when approximately 4,500 tonnes of a mixture of ammonium sulfate and ammonium nitrate fertilizer stored in a tower silo exploded at a BASF plant in Oppau, now part of Ludwigshafen, Germany, killing 500–600 people and injuring about 2,000 more.
TNT equivalent is a convention for expressing energy, typically used to describe the energy released in an explosion. The ton of TNT is a unit of energy defined by convention to be 4.184 gigajoules, which is the approximate energy released in the detonation of a metric ton of TNT. In other words, for each gram of TNT exploded, 4.184 kilojoules of energy are released.
Urea nitrate is a fertilizer-based high explosive that has been used in improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and various terrorist acts elsewhere in the world such as in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. It has a destructive power similar to better-known ammonium nitrate explosives, with a velocity of detonation between 3,400 m/s (11,155 ft/s) and 4,700 m/s (15,420 ft/s). It has chemical formula of CH5N3O4 or (NH2)2COHNO3.
The 1924 Nixon Nitration Works disaster was an explosion and fire that claimed many lives and destroyed several square miles of New Jersey factories. It began on March 1, 1924, about 11:15 a.m., when an explosion destroyed a building in Nixon, New Jersey used for processing ammonium nitrate. The explosion touched off fires in surrounding buildings in the Nixon Nitration Works that contained other highly flammable materials. The disaster killed twenty people, destroyed forty buildings, and demolished the "tiny industrial town of Nixon, New Jersey."
An explosion is a rapid expansion in volume of a given amount of matter associated with an extreme outward release of energy, usually with the generation of high temperatures and release of high-pressure gases. Explosions may also be generated by a slower expansion that would normally not be forceful, but is not allowed to expand, so that when whatever is containing the expansion is broken by the pressure that builds as the matter inside tries to expand, the matter expands forcefully. An example of this is a volcanic eruption created by the expansion of magma in a magma chamber as it rises to the surface. Supersonic explosions created by high explosives are known as detonations and travel through shock waves. Subsonic explosions are created by low explosives through a slower combustion process known as deflagration.
On April 17, 2013, an ammonium nitrate explosion occurred at the West Fertilizer Company storage and distribution facility in West, Texas, United States, while emergency services personnel were responding to a fire at the facility. Fifteen people were killed, more than 160 were injured, and more than 150 buildings were damaged or destroyed. Investigators confirmed that ammonium nitrate was the material that exploded. On May 11, 2016, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives stated that the fire had been deliberately set. That finding has been disputed.
The Port Neal fertilizer plant explosion occurred on December 13, 1994 in the ammonium nitrate plant at the Terra International, Inc., Port Neal Complex, 16 mi (26 km) south of Sioux City, Iowa, United States. Four workers at the plant were killed by the explosion, and eighteen others were injured. The seven-story building at the seat of the blast was completely destroyed, leaving only a crater, and significant damage was inflicted to the surrounding structures. Four nearby electricity generating stations were disabled by the explosion, and the effects of the blast were felt up to 30 miles away. A high-voltage line running adjacent to the plant and over the Missouri River was damaged, disrupting power in the neighboring state of Nebraska. Two 15,000-ton refrigerated ammonia storage tanks were ruptured, releasing liquid ammonia and ammonia vapors which forced the evacuation of 1,700 residents from the surrounding area.
On 4 August 2020, a large amount of ammonium nitrate stored at the Port of Beirut in the capital city of Lebanon exploded, causing at least 218 deaths, 7,000 injuries, and US$15 billion in property damage, as well as leaving an estimated 300,000 people homeless. A cargo of 2,750 tonnes of the substance had been stored in a warehouse without proper safety measures for the previous six years after having been confiscated by Lebanese authorities from the abandoned ship MV Rhosus. A fire in the same warehouse preceded the explosion.
MV Rhosus was a general cargo ship that was abandoned in Beirut, Lebanon, after the ship was declared unseaworthy and the charterers lost interest in the cargo. The 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate which the ship was carrying was confiscated and brought to shore in 2014, and later contributed to the catastrophic 2020 Beirut explosion. The vessel's owner at the time of abandonment was Cyprus-based Russian businessman Igor Grechushkin. The ship sank in the Port of Beirut in 2018.
The 1972 Taroom explosion occurred after a truck carrying ammonium nitrate, an explosive and fertilizer, caught fire on 30 August 1972 near Taroom, Central Queensland, Australia. The explosion, on the Fitzroy Developmental Road near Stonecroft Station, 90 kilometres north-west of Taroom, killed three men.
↑ C. E. Munroe (1925). "Destruction of Muscle Shoals Ammonium Nitrate by Fire and Explosion". Industrial & Engineering Chemistry. 17 (8): 819. doi:10.1021/ie50188a015.
↑ "Texas City, Texas, Disaster". Texas City Firefighters Local 1259. 29 April 1947. Archived from the original on 9 December 2016. Retrieved 16 January 2017.
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