
A burning fuel barge on the Mobile River after an explosion.
It’s easy to take things for granted when you work with inflammable materials all day long. So many work places feature chemicals that could potentially be a fire hazard, and that’s not even considering the massive amounts of gas cans, old paint, oil, and other fire-worthy chemicals around the home. Even the experts aren’t immune to accidents. A group of fuel barges caught fire and exploded overnight in Mobile, Alabama. There were seven total explosions in the barges, which were docked on the Mobile River.
“It literally sounded like bombs going off around. The sky just lit up in orange and red. We could smell something in the air, we didn’t know if it was gas or smoke,” said Alan Waugh, who lives at the Fort Conde Inn on the shore across from where the barge blew up.
Here’s what the explosion looked like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByxErusIP7AThe fuel barges are owned by Kirby Inland Marine and were at Mobile’s Oil Recovery Company to clean the excess fuel out of their tanks. They were previously carrying a substance called natural gasoline. Three people, reported to be Oil Recovery employees, were injured in the explosion, but thankfully no fatalities have been reported. These explosions could have been a lot worse. Fire officials have decided it is safest to let the barges burn themselves out.
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