Fertilizer plant explosion in Waco, Texas

[Jelmer]

Just read this in the news, seems the bad news keeps on rolling in, and this is already way beyond Boston, casualty-wise. They speak of 60-100 dead already ;(

I hope you weren't anywhere close, Gerry?

[youtube]YuU0W-oykFI[/youtube]

[youtube]M3iL2EhVsTs[/youtube]

 

[gerryvz]

Hi Jelmer,

I saw/heard about that explosion. Very grim & sad. No, Waco is 90 miles north of Austin (on the road to Dallas) so about 3 hours drive from me.

But I'm right now anyway in Seattle at my parents house, in the house I grew up in . I was in my former home town of Portland, Oregon from Sunday to yesterday afternoon on a business trip for the OpenStack Summit and then I drove (a 2013 Toyota Camry driving appliance) the 3 hours north to Seattle.

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[Jelmer]

Well, that's good to hear. The whole initial response "oh, in Texas? That's where Gerry lives" is kinda off, since that single state is about the size of Europe

 

[gerryvz]

Yes, it's almost exactly the same distance from me as Bruxelles is from you

Here's a good overview of Texas and its size ... start at 0:35 in the video....

[youtube]FC16-4fh-Qc[/youtube]


P.S. This one's for samiam44 and alabbassi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrhJsJPfOLg

 

[500AMM]

Well, that's good to hear. The whole initial response "oh, in Texas? That's where Gerry lives" is kinda off, since that single state is about the size of Europe

Mmmnnn - not exactly. Based on WIKI numbers is the entire "Urop" close to 14,5 times bigger than Texas. But the size of Central Europe is closer:

• Europe 10.071.283 km[SUP]2
  [/SUP]
• Central Europe 1.036.370 km[SUP]2
  [/SUP]
• Texas 695.621 km[SUP]2[/SUP]

However, this is a tragic disaster and it's now proven to be a extremist terror attack again.

Religion = Trouble

 

[Jelmer]

Small rounding errors in my math, Arnt ;-)

Kidding, I know Europe is larger, it's just that Texas is about 18 times larger than the Netherlands, with it's puny 37.354 km² (of which 18% water...)

However, this is a tragic disaster and it's now proven to be a extremist terror attack again.

Seriously? That's insane...