AZF from city center, 4 or 5 km (through tourist public telescope)

AZF (French initialism for AZote Fertilisant, i.e. nitrogen fertilizer) was the name of a chemical factory near Toulouse, France, which exploded on September 21, 2001. In the spring of 2004, a terrorist group adopted the same name and threatened the French government with bombings on railways. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (640x632, 27 KB) Summary Description: AZF chemical factory of Toulouse (from city center, 4 or 5 km), it blown on september 21th 2001, 30 dead people. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (640x632, 27 KB) Summary Description: AZF chemical factory of Toulouse (from city center, 4 or 5 km), it blown on september 21th 2001, 30 dead people. ... Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations formed from the initial letter or letters of words, such as NATO and XHTML, and are pronounced in a way that is distinct from the full pronunciation of what the letters stand for. ... New city flag (Occitan cross) Traditional coat of arms Motto: (Occitan: For Toulouse, always more) Location Coordinates Time Zone CET (GMT +1) Administration Country Region Midi-Pyrénées Department Haute-Garonne (31) Intercommunality Community of Agglomeration of Greater Toulouse Mayor Jean-Luc Moudenc  (UMP) (since 2004) City Statistics Land... is the 264th day of the year (265th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2001 (MMI) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 2001 Gregorian calendar). ... Year 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... AZF is a terrorist group based in France. ...

Toulouse chemical factory explosion

On September 21, 2001, a huge explosion occurred in the AZF fertilizer factory in Toulouse, France, belonging to the Grande Paroisse branch of the Total group. is the 264th day of the year (265th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2001 (MMI) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 2001 Gregorian calendar). ... Spreading manure, an organic fertilizer Fertilizers (also spelled fertilisers) are compounds given to plants to promote growth; they are usually applied either via the soil, for uptake by plant roots, or by foliar feeding, for uptake through leaves. ... Total S.A. (Euronext: FP, NYSE: TOT) is a French oil company headquartered in Paris, France. ...

Three hundred tons of giant pigs were stored (the maximum capacity was 2,000 tons) in the hangar #221. The whole factory was destroyed making a crater of depth 20 to 30 m (65 to 100 ft), with a diameter of 200 m (650 ft); steel girders were found 3 km away from the explosion. The explosion was heard 80 km away (50 miles). Due to the acoustics of the hills and the large sound, the explosion was reported as occurring in multiple places. Police at first believed that at least five bombs had simultaneously gone off. There is still controversy over the exact number of explosions.

The factory was close to the city: one of the most inhabited areas, Le Mirail, is just one kilometer away (0.6 miles). Several schools, one university campus, one hospital and a psychiatric hospital had to be evacuated.

Victims

The disaster caused 29 deaths (28 from the factory, one lycéen — secondary school/high school pupil — from a neighbouring school), 2,500 seriously wounded and 8,000 light casualties. Two thirds of the city's windows were shattered, causing 70 eye wounds and several thousand wounds which had to be sutured. The full environmental consequences of the catastrophe are not yet completely known. The total damages already payed by insurance groups are exceeding now 1.5 billion euros (about 2 billion US$ in 2007).

40,000 people — 10 % of the population — were made homeless for a few days.

Aftermath

The results of the official enquiry were that a warehouse of ammonium nitrate had exploded following improper handling of this dangerous material, including mixing with chemical impurities. Related Compounds Other anions Ammonium nitrite; ammonium perchlorate Other cations Sodium nitrate; potassium nitrate; hydroxylammonium nitrate Related compounds Nitrous oxide Except where noted otherwise, data are given for materials in their standard state (at 25 Â°C, 100 kPa) Infobox disclaimer and references The chemical compound ammonium nitrate, the nitrate of... Impurities are substances inside a confined amount of liquid, gas, or solid, which differ from the chemical composition of the material or compound. ...

Specifically it is believed by mandated official experts that "a mislabeled 500kg bin of sodium dichloroisocyanate mistakenly thought to be ammonium nitrate was dumped in the off spec ammonium nitrate warehouse. Here under sufficiently hot and humid conditions it could have reacted with the ammonium nitrate to form nitrogen trichloride which is an exceedingly unstable compound. The decomposition of the nitrogen trichloride could have provided the heat and pressure required to detonate the ammonium nitrate which when used as an industrial explosive typically requires detonators." Nitrogen trichloride, also known as trichloramine, is the chemical compound with the formula NCl3. ...

Alternative hypotheses

Other hypotheses explaining the explosion have been discussed by the public, not satisfied by the result of this inquiry:

• various independent measures conclude to a seismic event of magnitude 3.4 on the Richter scale;
• the time between the P-type and S-type seismic waves was not correctly estimated, in a possible attempt to hide the existence of multiple explosions or shocks occurring at different times in different places;
• the seismic epicenter was officially approximated to the AZF site, using a limited set of uncalibrated seismographs, but when using a much larger set of calibrated seismographs, the epicenter must be much further to the East;
• this magnitude is incompatible with the total energy that the AZF explosion could have produced alone, if only the ammonium nitrates exploded (because there are evidences that the actual AZF storage was much insufficient, and that many tons of stored products were only thrown away by the blast into the atmosphere or the environment in a giant cloud of unburnt product, that dispersed fertilizers for several weeks over a very large zone of the Toulousean area, so that only about 10%-15% of the AZF storage actually exploded);
• many people have attested that they have felt, heard or seen at least two separate explosions, with the explosion in the SNPE phosgene site occurring before the one in AZF, and forming a first cloud (column shaped and white, before flattening and becoming mushroom-shaped and brown) extremely fast before the second explosion in AZF, 6 to 8 seconds after;
• an unexplained initial subterranean explosion roughly 8 to 12 seconds before the main AZF explosion, in the SNPE (Société Nationale de Propulsants et Explosifs) located mere hundreds of meters away from the AZF factory, which would have caused electrical deficiencies (as shown on the records by the national electric company EDF) and an electrical arc that could have provided the energy for igniting the ammonium nitrate stored in the hangar 221 of AZF (both sites are connected to the same high tension electrical lines);
• a meteorite fall directly on the chemical storage house, (however there are no judiciary verifiable testimonies);
• a rocket or explosive device detonating near the hangar 221 (this is considered by many as speculation, currently not asserted by judiciary enforceable testimonies);
• a misfire of an experiment in wireless transmission of energy using microwave beams, secretly conducted by the French Army (also seen for now as speculation), that caused both SNPE and AZF explosions, and the electrical anomalies mentioned above.

In other words, the events that occurred was a chain reaction of several events in a very risky area, whose exact sequence and nature is still undetermined, one of which may be of natural seismic origin, or caused by some unknown event far away from the SNPE and AZF factory sites, but which would have been strong enough to cause the explosion of the SNPE phosgenation site, which finally caused indirectly the AZF detonation and explosion (i.e. the opposite order of events of what official experts have currently concluded). The Richter magnitude scale, or more correctly local magnitude ML scale, assigns a single number to quantify the amount of seismic energy released by an earthquake. ... An artists depiction of a solar satellite, which could send energy wirelessly to a space vessel or planetary surface. ...

Independent investigators are still looking today for what really happened under an uninhabited military site between the CHU (public university hospital) and another military hospital, where the epicenter of the Richter-scaled 3.4 seismic event was more precisely recalculated, far from the two suspected AZF and SNPE industrial sites, and why some structures (such as excessively large water supplies) that were built in that isolated area without any good known reasons, have been abandoned or destroyed after the event.

Independently of the possibly natural or accidental event that may have occurred in an alternate uninvestigated epicenter, all the attention was given to accuse only the AZF site due to its failing management of industrial risks, but very little or nothing has been done against the SNPE, and independent investigators are thinking that not all industrial responsibilities were sought, preferring to concentrate only on the case of AZF, possibly because the AZF site was better covered by insurances, and because the nature of the works at the SNPE site were to be kept secret and possibly classified (possibly hiding some secret experimentation or installation which was accidentally destroyed).

It is notable that the AZF site has now been completely destroyed by authorities, but not the SNPE site, which was completely rebuilt despite its buildings being apparently more damaged. Investigations into the seismic events may have been partly falsified or construed so that AZF would be the only enterprise held responsible, as if it were the only origin of the disaster that effectively happened and that destroyed lots of other organizations, and made tens of thousands of homeless in the city of Toulouse for the next days after the event. The judiciary authorities have given very strange conclusions, with many "scientific" errors and approximations that are now unsustainable.

Evidences and testimonies could also have been kept silent, and easily altered, hidden or destroyed, as this event occurred when most independent medias were much more concerned with the recent terrorist events in New York on September 11, just 10 days before the AZF/SNPE event in Toulouse.

Six years after the events, the explosion(s) in AZF/SNPE sites near Toulouse were not explained, due to minimum investigations, destruction of some evidence, and a total absence of international review by serious independent experts. Their many victims are still waiting for the complete truth, as not all of them have received a correct and complete reparation for the damages they have personally experienced, in their home, assets and jobs, in their families, or in their body for the rest of their life.

What is true is that the concentration on the same place, of two major risky industrial sites, built very near a highly populated metropolitan area, was something that played a role in the huge scale of these dramatic events, and that one of these risks could not be authorized again, leading to the required complete abandon of the AZF site instead of its reconstruction.

Sources and bibliography

• (French) Daniel Dissy : "AZF-Toulouse, Quelle vérité ?", 2006, ISBN 2-915681-30-9, Library of Congress Control No : 2007370387.

External links

http://enqueteazf.skyblog.com/

 CONSEQUENCE OF TEST Franco-German MILITARY ELECTROMAGNETIQUES blog Carlos CAMPOS XERFAN 

An investigation parallel in the light of the legal ...

http://www.arme-collection.com/AZF-WEB/AZF/Go.html/

 Pierre Grésillaud - Civil engineer of the Mines, originator of developer of geographical information systems 

• (French) Unofficial AZF website
• (French) Pictures & Photos of AZF two years after