Oklahoma City bombing

Two of the previously mentioned accidents and the Oklahoma City bombing showed the explosive potential of nitrogen fertilizer so this is a good place to stan. 

Before the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, emergency incidents were primarily or generally thought to be caused by natural or accidental events. Examples of natural phenomena (events) include wildfires, flash floods, earthquakes, active volcanoes, droughts, and storms. These natural events are not entirely predictable, and they cannot yet be controlled or prevented (Meyer 2004). 

I waited a couple of days until April 20, which I had chosen as my get-even-with-the-world-day. Historically, big things seem to happen on this particular date—the birth of Hitler, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Columbine High School massacre, and the Waco showdown—so I was determined to continue the trend. 

Actually, before the Oklahoma City bombing, the anthrax attacks, and 9/11, OSHA and USEPA had already taken the initial steps to ensure safety and security in chemical production facilities and in other facilities that use, produce, or store listed chemicals. These steps were listed in OSHA s Process Safety Management (PSM) Standard and USEPA s Risk Management Program (RMP). Based on personal experience, having conducted VAs and modified VAs (wastewater) on both water and wastewater systems and having implemented RMP in a major U.S. wastewater system, we have to concur that these initial safety/security steps were quite effective. 

By current practice, large quantities of AN are never accumulated or exposed to heat or fires. However, fertilizer storage warehouses still explode occasionally, and AN has become a popular, inexpensive, and readily available material for terrorists, for example, in the World Trade Center bombing in New York City in 1992 and the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995. 

Nuclear Explosions Although conventional explosives have become the weapons of choice of terrorist groups, a joint report issued in 2008 by Harvard s Kennedy School of Government and the Nuclear Threat Initiative reminds us that there is a real danger that terrorists could get and use a nuclear weapon.16 In order to understand what this would mean, we return to the atomic nucleus. A nuclear fission reaction releases far more energy than any ordinary chemical process. The Oklahoma City bomb was equivalent to the explosion of approximately 40001b of TNT.17 In contrast, the atomic bomb dropped on... 

The Explosion Investigation Section of the National Research Institute of Police Science of Japan [79] makes use of GC with a TEA and IC to analyse trace explosive residues from debris. An EGIS explosives detector was also used in the Oklahoma City bombing investigation [80],... 

Even within a destination category, patients are often poorly distributed. One review of 26 disasters found that on average 67% of patients were treated at one ED even though other EDs were available (Auf der Heide, 1996). In the Oklahoma City bombing, 7 of 13 hospitals... 

Typically the responses to such appeals are overwhelmingly positive. In the face of major disaster, many people who are not affected by the emergency react generously to appeals for assistance. This was certainly true in the hours, days, and weeks after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 as it was after the devastation of the World Tkade Center in New York City, the partial destruction of the Pentagon outside of Washington, DC, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. 

Michel, L., and Herbeck, D. (2001). American terrorist Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing. New York Regan Books. 

North, CS, Nixon, SJ, Sharaiat, S, MaUonee, S, McMrilen, JC, Spitznagel, EL, Smith, EM. Psychiatric Disorders Among Survivors of the Oklahoma City Bombing. Journal of the American Medical Association, 282(8) 755-762, 1999... 

Ammonium nitrate has other important applications about 25% of the manufactured output is used directly in explosives, but its ready accessibility makes it a target for misuse, e.g. in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. The potentially explosive nature of [NH4][N03] also makes it a high-risk chemical for transportation. 

In an earlier disaster, a warehouse full of ammonium nitrate exploded in a chemical plant in Germany, killing thousands. A mixture of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and fuel oil was a tool in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Such combinations are common industrial explosives. As mentioned earlier, the presence of flammable or combustible material can accelerate the fire and sustain it because of nitrous oxide and/or oxygen released during the exothermic decomposition of ammonium nitrate. 

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