Boom today

[plutherus]

You want to know what's going on down there? BOOM! Boom! Boomboomboom!
-Susan Ivanova, Babylon 5 "Voice in the Wilderness"

So, I get out of a meeting at 4 to find half the office clustered around the conference room windows. Apparently, a nearby chemical storage plant had caught fire, causing a series of explosions. The fire, from all reports, was quite spectacular, with huge gouts of red, orange, blue, white flames shooting up into the sky as various gasses overheated and exploded.

As of sunset, all of downtown St. Louis is still covered in grey smoke - like a thickly overcast day. Didn't seem to cool it down any, though.

Update: I love the internet: I search the news sites to see if I can find any information, and get a story from the UK. I just love the idea of going halfway around to the world to find out what's happening a few blocks away from me :)

I believe it started around 2-3pm. At 6pm, they were still trying to put it out, but all that could be seen from a distance was a bunch of smoke, and the huge arcs of water from the firefighters:



I took that crappy picture with my little keychain camera while walking home, but you can see the smoke plume, and arcs of water in the lower left. There was also a whole mess 'o helicopters circling it, of which I thought at the time I'd caught at least three in the picture, but I can't seem to see them now.