McEWEN, Tenn. (AP) — The blast in rural Tennessee that leveled an explosives plant and was felt for miles around left no survivors, authorities said Saturday.
The total number of dead was unclear, as was the cause of the Friday blast. By the weekend, the devastation came into focus, with officials saying they had found no survivors. A total of 16 people were missing, officials said.
“There’s a gauntlet of emotions there,” Humphreys County Sheriff Chris Davis said during a news conference, pausing to clear his throat before he asked for prayers for the families of the victims in a shaky voice.
“We’ve recovered no survivors,” he added.
61 Comments
moody@lemmings.world · 196 pts · 314d
That's such a sick statement to make. Truly disgusting.
Greddan@feddit.org · 62 pts · 313d
lightnsfw@reddthat.com · 2 pts · 312d
I'm not religious but I don't see the problem with pointing out that the church can offer a lot of support to people after something like this.
sploder@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 312d
He said “ minister “ not support. Seeing a tragedy as an opportunity to minister aka get more people into your church aka MORE MONEY for yourself, is far from supporting people who need it. It’s predatory and disgusting. I grew up knee deep in that shit and hated every second of it.
jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 312d
"never let a crisis go to waste" - Winston Churchill
lightnsfw@reddthat.com · 1 pts · 312d
Maybe we just have a different understanding of what ministering means. I've not spent much time in church though so I'll shut up.
handsoffmydata@lemmy.zip · -73 pts · 313d
Fuck anyone for trying to comfort another person if their worldview doesn’t match mine. Right, buddy?
moody@lemmings.world · 56 pts · 313d
First of all, opportunities are positive events, not things that one dreads. Calling the death of 16 people an opportunity to advance the goals of your church is sick.
Second, fuck religion. I don't hate people who are duped into them. I hate the people doing the duping. I don't care about Joe Schmoe who goes to church on Sunday, but I hate the priest who touches children and rants to his congregation about sin and going to Hell.
handsoffmydata@lemmy.zip · -49 pts · 313d
Is English your first language? People often use the word opportunity to find purpose in hardship, reframing adversity as something that might lead to growth.
Wow, what a hot take. Someone give this guy more updoots for taking such a brave stance.
NikkiDimes@lemmy.world · 24 pts · 313d
Is English your first language? You just completely supported their argument with your explanation of how "opportunity" is used lol
vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works · 21 pts · 313d
The reason moody has issue is probably due to how predatory it is from an outside perspective, sure from within it's helping the community and bringing folks to Jeebus or whatever. But from without it just comes across as scummy and predatory, it's basically the same thing cults do capture folks while they're at their lowest.
Theres a church near me that does a hot meals thing with an open pantry so folks on hard times can get a hot meal and some food for the week, no strings attached don't need to attend church or believe in their god or anything. Closest thing to pressure is that the pastor wanders around and just talks to folks, if they want to talk video games he talks video games, anime then anime, Jesus then Jesus. There's no pressure for anything beyond saying thanks,
Also the pastor lets the local Neo-Hellenic guys use their backyard area for rituals which is fucking awesome. Same with the Wiccan.
village604@adultswim.fan · 3 pts · 313d
Remember, the only difference between a cult and a religion is membership levels.
village604@adultswim.fan · 11 pts · 313d
Opportunity - Noun:
I suppose people dying is favorable if you want to push your cult on their grieving families.
warbond@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 313d
Opportunity as a way to reframe a bad situation is a good argument. "Is English your first language" is a very poor argument. Merriam-Webster shows it as positive, Cambridge says between positive and neutral, and Oxford just says neutral. As a native English speaker I feel comfortable saying that the connotation of opportunity is generally positive.
Zetta@mander.xyz · 7 pts · 313d
Religion is brain dead buddy, sorry you got into it. If you were a kid, it's not your fault. You were brainwashed before you could develop critical thinking skills. If you're an adult, sorry bud you got scammed
Taleya@aussie.zone · 6 pts · 313d
Chance is the word you use there. A chance for hope. A chance to comfort. A chance to bring people together to survive the tragedy.
There's a reason why "opportunity" and "opportunistic" are related.
Rachelhazideas@lemmy.world · 33 pts · 313d
Your comments show that your empathy is underdeveloped.
Comfort isn't about yourself. When someone is grieving, you don't do what makes yourself better, you do what makes them feel better.
Calling the loss of lives an 'opportunity' is making it about yourself because it describes how this situation benefits your personal religious agenda, not the beliefs of others. Proselytizing to others in their most vulnerable moment because it makes you feel accomplished is making it about yourself, not them.
mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 14 pts · 312d
It’s not about matching worldviews. It’s about the statement essentially being “yeah it sucks for these people, but it’ll be great for the church.” At best, it’s tone-deaf. At worst, it’s downright sociopathic. Comforting someone else shouldn’t ever be about how it can benefit you.
HasturInYellow@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 313d
If comfort were the actual goal, you'd be right. But Christians are lying snakes, sooo.....
handsoffmydata@lemmy.zip · -19 pts · 313d
“But [insert group name] are lying snakes” isn’t a healthy opinion to have. Seek help.
HasturInYellow@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 313d
I could clarify that "not all Christians" but see arguments about men being rapists. It's simply easier and safer to treat all Christians as dangerous.
BananaIsABerry@lemmy.zip · -3 pts · 312d
Turns out it's totally fine to stereotype entire groups as long as they aren't women or not white.
ayyy@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 313d
We have a word for speaking confidently about something without evidence. That word is “lying”.
dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works · 9 pts · 312d
Don't feel sad about downvotes. It's too bad it happened, but this is a great opportunity to tell you that the Eric the God Eating Penguin exists!
elevenbones@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 312d
Dumb
driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br · 144 pts · 314d
You can bet this can be backtracked to some deregulation shit.
snooggums@piefed.world · 47 pts · 314d
100%
I can't imagine safety regulations wouldn't have included separation of large amounts of explosives by distance or with some kind of materials to avoid such a catastrophic explosion.
ricecake@sh.itjust.works · 14 pts · 313d
So, they do. Unfortunately, there aren't realistic safety precautions that can be taken that don't have some risk of catastrophic failure if you're dealing with the manufacturing and storage of explosives. Even small quantities are destructive enough to be dangerous to store.
Ultimately safe storage comes down to human operational concerns. Missing or unenforced regulations relating to working hours, training, training compliance, or handling safety concerns would be my guess rather than storage conditions.
warbond@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 313d
Didn't I read somewhere that they were operating at a faster than normal pace?
ricecake@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 312d
It wouldn't surprise me, but I haven't heard anything like that. Tough production schedules are a great way to cause incidents.
ayyy@sh.itjust.works · 0 pts · 313d
It is absolutely possible to work with smaller batches so that if something goes wrong it doesn’t take out the entire fucking building. It’s just less profitable.
ricecake@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 313d
I didn't say it was impossible, just unrealistic. The cost increase for producing in batches smaller than what can cause a problem aren't worth it if you afterwards just put it in the same pile. Customers aren't going to want to take delivery as dozens of small shipments spread out over months, but in batches determined by how fast they use it and how much buffer they need. They're certainly not going to want that rate slowed down by the factory having other customers.
The place where regulatory oversight is missing is in making sure that management isn't pushing workers to work unsafely, or even letting them if they try.
ayyy@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 312d
You can blather on about theoretical customers that for some reason are warehousing unsafe quantities, but I don’t understand why thats relevant since this happened at the originating factory, not Imaginary Negligent Munitions Assembler, Inc. You say that working in safe quantities “isn’t worth it”. I must ask: it isn’t worth it to whom? The families of the obliterated corpses? Or just the greedy rich owners of the factory?
ricecake@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 312d
You're lining up for a strawman. I very clearly stated that fault was with the owners and management for not enforcing safe operating procedures.
I disagreed that the gap in regulation was likely because of safe storage quantities, and more likely because of a failure to enforce safe operating practices.
Don't make it out to be like I'm saying nothing could have been done to save these people's lives.
I'm saying expecting an explosives manufacturer to have less than what's used in a typical charge onsite at any moment is unrealistic, as is storing reasonable quantities such that catastrophe is impossible. Any storage and manufacturing practices that could give you those guarantees would also require a rigorous training process and strong safety culture with well defined and enforced procedures and safeguards.
What, in your mind, is a reasonable and safe quantity of explosives to warehouse for the manufacture of bombs?
By their nature, bombs contain an unsafe quantity of explosives. Safety comes from handling, not saying you can only have half of a 500lb bomb at a time.
NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml · 0 pts · 314d
ChicoSuave@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 314d
It's good for business to make sure nothing stands in the way of success. That's why safety and humanity are nowhere to be found.
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 314d
And explosives apparently...
dan1101@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 313d
MAGA in action? DuPont used to have a brutally practical way to deal with pesky explosions in it's black powder factories:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleutherian_Mills
The opposite of progressive is regressive.
IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 313d
not worry about that, they'll blame trans or black people
Witchfire@lemmy.world · 41 pts · 314d
I wonder if they knew the place was gonna blow or if it was just lights out in an instant with no warning. Explosives tend to be the latter, for better or worse
ricecake@sh.itjust.works · 34 pts · 314d
A lot of explosions at similar facilities had significant warning, unfortunately. While the detonation itself tends to be instant, they usually have rules about how densely explosives are packed, fire control systems, and systems to maximize the time between problem and disaster.
They probably knew something was wrong and that it was bad, but not how bad.
FoxyFerengi@startrek.website · 38 pts · 314d
This same facility had an explosion in 2014 that resulted in death. The fact that they didn't learn from that and chose to continue to be reckless is sad and infuriating.
oddlyqueer@lemmy.ml · 14 pts · 314d
They ran the numbers, it's actually cheaper to replace any equipment that gets damaged or killed.
bradorsomething@ttrpg.network · 17 pts · 313d
I used to work in the oil industry, and there are old field logs from the 50s/60s where a whole crew died and the well is manned 2 days later. In the early 2000s we’d spend days on a single death or injury. Once the company paid the overtime because a guy’s wife was in labor and the contractor didn’t want to give him time off. It was addressed as a safety issue, there was no way he could concentrate safely… no issues to pay it. Sad to see the munitions industry caught in the 50s.
Frostbeard@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 313d
That depends on country tbh. And the The strange/sad thing is that I have read the DoD manuals (not American, but the DoD enforces their standars and audits foreign suppliers) and they are pretty stringent.
It's also bad strategy to have a supply chain that is weak to episodes like this.
ricecake@sh.itjust.works · 10 pts · 313d
So I looked into it, briefly, and it looks like that incident was a different company who rented space in their complex.
That isn't better for them now, but there's a difference between negligence and renting to the negligent.
Rubisco@slrpnk.net · 34 pts · 314d
Apparently not the first time.
Sucks that Ukraine might see fewer shells from this.
https://www.aesys.biz/products
Energetics. Yeah that's one way of putting it.
Not quite Oppau, but close.
HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works · 12 pts · 313d
And the Halifax, Nova Scotia explosion that killed 1782 people.
Fyi -- this is why every year Halifax sends a Christmas tree to Boston (who sent scores of people to help the city) as a thank-you.
Frostbeard@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 313d
Energetic materials is the common way to group explosives, pyrotechnics and propellants.
Anything that carries its own oxygen, is self sustained and reacts exothermic.
Rubisco@slrpnk.net · 3 pts · 313d
I see. Thank you!
Do you work with any energetics?
Frostbeard@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 312d
I do. Army Combat Engineer. Then master in physical chemistry. Working (not in the US) last 14 years with production, use (blasting) and storage. I am very interested in the conclusions after this accident.
Rubisco@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 312d
Ahhh, that makes sense. It sounds like a very interesting line of work.
Yeah, very curious how this happened.
SpiceDealer@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 33 pts · 313d
Considering that our Trump-loving governor let Elon Musk install poisonous gas turbines in my hometown and is letting the National Guard and ICE run rampant, I won't be surprised if he blames this on "left-wing actors." Fuck you, Bill Lee. R.I.P to those lost in the blast.
dick_fineman@discuss.online · 5 pts · 313d
I'm sorry if you, or anyone you know, is touched by this. Fuck anyone who contributed to this happening.
ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online · 3 pts · 312d
The one thing I know is that they will go about their 'left wing has been responsible for 200% of all terrorism since 1828 and the only violent actions we took are in self-defence and started literally last Tuesday' schtick for forever and a day. No amount of refutation or rational argumentation will ever convince them otherwise. A mentally ill pissed off person throwing a sandwich at a guard justifies hit and runs and shoot first, don't bother with questions going forward (and if it didn't happen, they would still do it).
lengau@midwest.social · 2 pts · 312d
Fuck governor HVAC.
Bonesince1997@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 314d
RIP
ABetterTomorrow@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 313d
This fucking sucks. :(
ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online · 3 pts · 312d
Negligence due to reduced regulation or sabotage? Take your bets, people!
lengau@midwest.social · 3 pts · 312d
Honestly I'm surprised Mark Green isn't already all over the media claiming it was sabotaged by antifa.
Corelli_III@midwest.social · 2 pts · 312d
oh nooooo those poor murder bomb makers 🍆 💦
Formfiller@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 313d
That was obvious. I don’t know why we needed a second headline for that
Headofthebored@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 314d
Yeah, I have my doubts they were making bombs for a good cause...