Two Oil Storage Tanks Blow Up, Three Others Burn Following Explosion

Monterey, LA, United States 2/22/2000- 4:00 PM

Authorities don't know why two oil storage tanks blew up and three others burned in Concordia Parish, Louisiana, just west of the Mississippi River.

No injuries were reported, and an evacuation was not required because no one lives close to the temporary crude oil storage facility, according to Louisiana State Trooper Steve Childers.

The report of an explosion was received shortly after 4 p.m. at the site located just off State Highway 129, near the town of Monterey. Authorities learned later that two storage tanks had blown up.

Within two hours, three more storage tanks burned. Each tank held between 8,800 and 16,800 gallons of oil.

Representatives of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality were sent to the scene to investigation, although there were no initial reports of environmental damage.

The temporary storage facility was maintained for crude oil owned by Sea Gull Co., headquarters location not known.

http://chemsafety.gov/circ/post.cfm?incident_id=4685

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), February 23, 2000

Answers

One more facility bites the dust...decreasing, once again, the flow of various petroleum products to the consumer... Probable individual impact: virtually none. However, there is a cumulative. impact...

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), February 23, 2000.

Paranoid. Why things blow up all the time, to paraphrase the .gov 3- 5% of things blow up on any given day so don't ya'll go and start a panic. Jeeeesshhh it isn't as if planes are falling from the sky, oops strike that last. The total lack of any media coverage of anything negative is absolutely astounding. 1984 is here and we must support the dark leader in his quest for a legacy. Gas is a buck and half with only talk to try to control the Futures market. The market is coasting down yet talk about which sector deserves your margin account, people are acting even more irrational than normal.

Why is the dept of enviromental quality investigating an explosion and fire? What the US Park Police weren't available?

-- Squid (ItsDark@down.here), February 24, 2000.

I suspect they blew because somebody was mad at somebody. These tanks are way out in the fields, end of long dirt roads, nobody around. Set up a simple fuse and walk away - cigarette in a matchbook, that kind of thing.

Four tanks in two hours? If that were four grassfires in two hours, we'd all know it's arson. That's all it is here, too.

-- bw (home@puget.sound), February 24, 2000.