Blast Sends 'Sea of Fire' Through North Korean City (witness account)

[54anickel]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35709-2004Apr23.html

DANDONG, China, April 23 -- Cars and trucks sped madly by, she recalled, packed with bleeding, moaning passengers on their way to hospitals, clinics, relatives' homes -- anywhere but the nearby North Korean railway station where a tremendous blast had just sent a "sea of fire" rolling across an entire neighborhood.

"People were in every posture," the woman related shortly after arriving Friday afternoon in Dandong, on the Chinese bank of the Yalu River borderline. "Some were lying down. Some were standing. Some were crying and screaming. They all looked scared."

The blast, which occurred midday Thursday at Ryongchon about 12 miles east of here, carved a large circle of death and destruction in the city of 130,000, according to official and humanitarian sources. John Sparrow, a regional spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said it killed at least 54 people, injured 1,249, demolished 1,850 buildings and damaged about 6,000 more. Anne O'Mahony, regional director of the aid group Concern, told reporters by telephone from Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, that the government informed her organization about 150 people had been killed and more than 1,000 injured.

The traveler interviewed here said she was told by a friend, who visited the blast site Thursday afternoon to look for missing family members, that many buildings, including a school that was in session, were smashed by the concussion or burned by the flames within a radius of more than a mile. She said she heard the explosion -- "one big sound, like a thunderclap" -- as she was eating lunch around noon in a restaurant about six miles from the Ryongchon railway station where the disaster occurred.

more...

[maddezmom]

1. "one big sound, like a thunderclap"

doesn't sound like a train full of explosives.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. Why not?

I'm presuming you've never actually heard a trainload of explosives going off (I haven't), but I'd have imagined it would be one big sound. What do you think it would sound like?

[maddezmom]

5. would think there would have been a few if not a series of explosions

BEIJING -- North Korea's government told aid workers at least 150 people were killed when two trains loaded with explosives collided and blew up near the Chinese border, an aid official told Irish radio Friday.

The North's government said the explosion occurred when trains carrying dynamite touched power lines, Anne O'Mahony, regional director of the Irish aid agency Concern, told RTE by telephone from Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.
~snip~
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apasia_story.asp?category=1104&slug=NKorea%20Train%20Explosion%20Death%20Toll

Just can't imagine a bunch or cars on the train exploding at once. But like you said, I've never heard a train explode before. :shrug:

[54anickel]

3. One big BOOM! Did you catch this part on speculation of what might

have happened?

In a dispatch from Pyongyang, the official New China News Agency said ammonium nitrate -- a substance used in fertilizers that can be explosive -- had been leaking from one of the trains. O'Mahony said her group was told freight cars carrying explosives were being attached to a train when they touched dangling electric wires, setting off the blast.

[Snow]

4. The last graf of that story makes a whole lot of sense to me..

and really jibes with my experience even in south korea..

-snip-
Koh Yu Hwan, professor of North Korean studies at Seoul's Dongkuh University, said arrangements to speed Kim's train on its way home may have contributed to the explosion.
"The accident probably took place because the area must have been cleared for several days to prepare for Kim Song-Il's trip," he said. "And then when Kim passed the site, they must have tried to get business done in a hurried manner to make up for the lost time."
-snip-

[54anickel]

6. Thought the same thing, based on what I've read about NK. It is all

very sad. Let's just hope that Kim Song-Il also believes it was an accident.