According to accounts, over 60,000 pounds of an explosive substance vanished from a rail car last month while it was being delivered across the western United States.
On May 10, explosives producer Dyno Nobel reported the disappearance of ammonium nitrate — the key ingredient in Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 Oklahoma City bomb — to the government National Response Center, according to KQED.
The chemical, which can also be used as fertilizer, was loaded onto a rail car that left Cheyenne, Wyoming, on April 12 bound for California, and the train car was discovered empty two weeks later during a stop in the Mojave Desert, according to the outlet.
There have been four separate investigations launched.
According to a Dyno Nobel representative, the company was delivering the ammonium nitrate in pellet form and believes it began dropping out of the rail car at some point during the voyage.
“When the railcar left the Cheyenne facility, it was sealed, 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 developed in transit,” a station official said.
According to a Dyno Nobel spokeswoman, “there is no indication of any danger to the public and no indication that the pellets were intentionally taken by anyone.” Every evidence is that the pellets fell off the rail car into the rails in little amounts over the long journey, finally leaving one of the rail car’s three sections empty.”
The business vowed a “exhaustive” investigation to “understand what led to this situation,” and a representative said that “by itself, in pellet form, such a leak of small quantities over a large area would not create additional risks for public or rail transport.”
