Windy booms

Sitting by the window at the computer early Sunday morning I too heard the rolls of what I thought was distant thunder. Fortunately, Sunday isn't the best time to listen to ESPN radio. TV sucks in the early morning hours. So I had 680News the all news radio channel on.

Not that 680 is all that good either. They don't do much news normally. Most of the time its in house advertising every two minutes or so telling everyone of how they do the news. You might get a story or so in between the advertisements.

But that AM they had breaking news right on the four am newscast. There was explosions in North York by Downsview. Well it was mayhem and confusion. They had five different virgins of the same story.

It took almost to 7:00 am by the time they had the story all sort of straight, they did report the massive sudden evacuation that took place. That thunder I heard was the explosions ten miles away.

Its strange. I mean the aftermath. The post partem period is worse than the actual events. Basically all the safety devices on propane tanks worked. Everything exploded upwards. They may never know what caused the explosion. Propane fires are like that.

My educated guess is that it was some kind of spark. Thunder had been in the area and could have left a charge in the industrial framing or the actual tanker truck. One or both were not grounded correctly. A tanker driver fortunately escaped the fire. Only one person is missing and if they had been caught inside the plant, they are likely dead.

One fire fighter died indirectly due to the fire suppression activity. 18 more fire fighters went to hospital for treatment. Fighting these kinds of fire is not easy. But to the credit, of the fire departments involved, this fire was contained within the site.

Later in the day though, Julian Fantino, the publicity seeking head of the OPP, couldn't wait to get onTV and give his pointless little point. The only thing the OPP did was to close down the 401. And even that took them a couple of hours to figure it out. What a putz.