Incident Report

Subject:         AUSTRALIA - ROAD TRAIN DRIVER UNHOOKED TRAILER 'MOMENTS' BEFORE AMMONIUM NITRATE EXPLODED, WITNESSES SAY

Date of Email report:  Wed 19/11/2014 14:22

Report Detail:

Residents more than several hundred metres away reported a loud bang when the road train exploded.

There have been a spate of ammonium nitrate incidents with a recent incident reported in Queensland Australia in September.  However, the reason for highlighting this incident is the ignorance of the public and more importantly of the press in the quality of the reports. See some of the technical gaffs in this one relating to the mistaken chemical involved -  ‘Nitrogen’ and not ‘Ammonium Nitrate’

A road train driver inhaled fumes as he desperately unhooked a burning trailer of explosive ammonium nitrate from his truck on the Stuart Highway at Ti Tree last night, witnesses say. Moments later the trailer exploded with a loud bang, startling residents in the small central Australian community about 200 kilometres north of Alice Springs. The driver had towed away the two other trailers of ammonium nitrate - a material used in explosives. It was the fifth road train accident in the Northern Territory in six days, after a truck carrying hot bitumen rolled yesterday, a truck of cattle tipped the day before and two other accidents the previous week. Police went door-to-door to evacuate residents to the school and establish a one-kilometre exclusion zone. They were aware a truck carrying ammonium nitrate had exploded in Queensland in September - the blast so powerful it destroyed two firefighting vehicles. Ti Tree Roadhouse manager Suzie Mcleod was standing in her front yard on the far side of the road when the trailer exploded. "I don't know a lot about nitrogen but I know it blows up," she said. "If that nitrogen mixed with fuel you can kiss yourself goodbye. "When we were looking at it stuff was just leaking from the front of the trailer. Whether it was brake fluid or what have you, we don't know. "The trailer was right across the road from the roadhouse in the new truck parking bay. "I can chuck a rock from where I'm standing here."

'I Live Next Door and the Whole Trailer Just Went Bang'

She said before the new truck bay had been built this year the trucks would park next to the roadhouse. "It would have been in our front yard," she said. "With the wind blowing the way it was blowing and having the truck in our front and blowing towards the fuel we would have been in a bit of trouble." A quick-thinking member of staff had switched off the roadhouse's fuel before the explosion. "Around about 8:45pm one of my staff members rang me and advised me there was a small fire," Ms Mcleod said. "He asked me if it was wise to shut the fuel down; I said yes, it was." "He raced around and called the police and got them down there. He was quite brilliant at it. We had everything in place. "The next minute I came outside because I live next door and the whole trailer just went bang. It was on fire. It was that quick."

"The fire truck we had here - they started squirting and then realised you can't put water on nitrogen so we were all evacuated." Ti Tree resident Gordon Hull said 60 to 80 people were evacuated to the school at the northern end of town. "We were evacuated about 10:30pm," he said. "We went home at 1:30am but we still had a 300 metre exclusion." "We have our own fire truck here but then the mob from Alice Springs came up at some stage."

Territory's Main Highway Closed for Hours
Senior Sergeant Darrell Kerr said Ti Tree police were called out to the report of a vehicle fire at about 9:00pm. "The road train consisted of a three flat- bed trailers carrying what was believed to be ammonium nitrate fertiliser," he said. "Witnesses at the roadhouse saw a fire igniting on the left-hand side of the rear axle of the rear trailer. "No-one was injured. Initially the highway was blocked while an exclusion zone was set up. "At 2:00am the fire crew declared the fire safe and Stuart Highway was reopened."

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