Bay Area public radio station KQED reported Tuesday:
A railcar loaded with 30 tons of the chemical left Cheyenne, Wyoming, on April 12. The car was found to be empty after it arrived two weeks later at a rail stop in the Mojave Desert, according to a short incident report from the explosives firm that made the shipment.
The company, Dyno Nobel, made the report May 10 to the federal National Response Center, or NRC. The report also appeared last week in an NRC database of California incidents managed by the state office of Emergency Services last Wednesday.
Dyno Nobel says it believes the material — transported in pellet form in a covered hopper car similar to those used to ship coal — fell from the car on the way to a rail siding called Saltdale, about 30 miles from the town of Mojave in eastern Kern County.Ammonium nitrate was the explosive in the massive bomb used in the Oklahoma City terror attack of 1995. It was also the substance that caused a deadly explosion in a warehouse in the port of Beirut, Lebanon, in 2020.
Foul play is not suspected yet, but the loss of a hazardous chemical is just the latest rail problem in the past several months. In February, a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, eventually leading to a massive explosion that spread potentially hazardous substances to the surrounding community.
