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When a Sprinkler Killed the Town: The Conyers Chemical Blast
When a Sprinkler Killed the Town: The Conyers Chemical Blast
Fear that a routine safety device could trigger a town-wide catastrophe: within hours of one sprinkler activating, 90,000 people fled and a column of orange and black smoke was visible 30 miles away. How did millions of pounds of a pool chemical, known to explode when wet, end up beneath an activated sprinkler - and why was it rebuilt on the same footprint after a major 2004 disaster?
In this episode, we lay out the chain of events and the industrial history that led to the Conyers warehouse explosion, from product chemistry to…
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