Mexican truck explosion story gets more interesting all the time

When the first reports came out about the Mexican truck explosion on Sunday, Sept. 9, the truck was reported to be carrying "mining explosives." Initially it was said that the blast occurred when the big rig hit another vehicle, leaving 37 dead, scores injured and a crater 65 feet wide in the roadway of northern Mexican highway, about a hundred miles northwest of Laredo, Texas.

Naturally, since it took place on the eve of the first Mexican trucks rolling into the U.S. under a pilot program designed to allow long haul access to the entire lower 48, it was seen as a symbolic and tragic failure of safety regulations, a signature event behind which opponents of allowing Mexican trucks unlimited U.S. access could rally.

But new details are now sharpening our understanding of what took place. They are also raising new mysterious questions.

It seems the truck was not hauling "mining explosives" after all. It was carrying ammonium nitrate, a type of fertilizer. Where have we heard of this stuff before? Oh, yeah! That's what Timothy McVeigh used (combined by necessity with diesel fuel and dynamite) to blow up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. According to Land Line Magazine, a publication for independent long-haul truckers, the truck was not registered to haul explosives. Which it wasn't, officially, since ammonium nitrate is not normally considered an explosive. In fact, ammonium nitrate (AN) doesn't explode all that easily. That's one of the mysteries of this story.

According to the Reuters' account, most of the dead and injured were bystanders who stopped to see the burning truck and were casualties of the explosion that occurred 40 minutes after the initial crash! Reporters, emergency workers, other drivers, killed and maimed. We've heard from several people that this belated explosion points to something odd, perhaps even evil. AN requires a combustive catalyst and a tight enclosure for a big explosion. Otherwise it will spark and fizzle and burn quite convincingly but not go boom. (Do you want to know more?)

Mystery No. 2: The driver of the truck reportedly fled the scene, whereabouts still unknown.

As usual there is the possibility that the explosion occurred for reasons that we do not know, perhaps even legitimate ones.

CONCLUSION No. 1 -- Given the disappearance of the driver, the timing of the event, and the odd explosion that should not have taken place unless the truck had unwisely hauled other dangerous combustibles with the AN, and you have to ask yourself: What is the probability that this is all just one big mistake?

CONCLUSION No. 2 -- Assuming that the explosion happened because mistakes were made by the company and/or the driver(s), electing to haul a combination of volatile and potentially catastrophic elements over the road, you must ask yourself: Do we really want to open our U.S. highways to people who are this ignorant or careless?

It's difficult to conceive of a third conclusion. Whether you buy into the conspiratorial conclusion No.1 or the "innocent negligence" of conclusion No.2, it doesn't exactly inspire confidence on the highways, does it?