About 60,000 tons 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 bombing 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 since 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.
Ammonium nitrate was the main ingredient in Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City.
“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.
Dyno Nobel did not immediately return The Post’s request for comment.
* Article From: The New York Post