60,000 pounds of explosive chemical lost in shipping: report

Dec 04, 2023

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About 60,000 pounds of an explosive chemical disappeared from a rail car last month as it was being shipped through the western US, according to reports.

Explosives company Dyno Nobel reported the vanishing ammonium nitrate — the main ingredient in Timothy McVeigh's 1995 bomb in Oklahoma City — to the federal National Response Center on May 10, KQED reported.

The chemical, which can also be used as a fertilizer, was put on a rail car that departed Cheyenne, Wyo., on April 12, headed for California, and the rail car was found empty two weeks later during a stop in the Mojave Desert, the outlet said.

Four separate investigations have been launched.

The company was shipping the ammonium nitrate in pellet form and believes it may have begun falling out of the rail car at some point during the trip, a Dyno Nobel spokesman told KQED.

"The railcar was sealed when it left the Cheyenne facility, and the seals were still intact when it arrived in Saltdale [Calif.]. The initial assessment is that a leak through the bottom gate on the railcar may have developed in transit," the spokesperson told the station.

A Dyno Nobel spokesman told The Post "there is no indication of any danger to the public and no indication the pellets were intentionally taken by anyone. Every indication is the pellets fell from the rail car onto the tracks in small quantities throughout the long trip — eventually leaving one of the three sections in the rail car empty."

The company promised an "exhaustive" review to "understand what led to this situation," and the spokesman noted that "by itself, in pellet form, such a leak of small quantities over a large area would not create additional risks for the public or rail transport."