DEP Invoice or Financial Record, September 30, 2001

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

rench...

fertilizer that farmers regularly union had repeatedly argued that a keep stocked in nylon bags. Experts move would be too expensive and here said that even a very large might lead to the closing down of the Paris • stock of ammonium nitrate is not a plant. Moreover, he said, the AZF

FRANCE M' problem as long as it is kept dry and cool. If it gets humid it can heat up and ferment, leading to spontaneous combustion. plant is interlinked with two neigh­ boring industrial complexes and a gunpowder plant, making a move not only costly but highly unlikely. Toulouse But chemists also explained that At the regional government, offi- fertilizer, while commonly available cials said no new decisions about the 7 as plant food, can also serve as an plant would be likely until the causes explosive. Miners use it mixed it with of the disaster were known. In the fuel, to blow things up. For the fertil- meantime, long processions of izer stocks to explode in the Toulouse trucks have been clearing the site, warehouse, experts here said, some hauling away the remaining chemi­ kind of fuel and a source of sudden cals for storage elsewhere. intense heat would probably have But much of Toulouse is still look- been needed as a. detonator. ing over its shoulder. Special securi- “There was no pump, no heat ty measures have been taken at Tou- The New York Times source in that building,” said Michel louse’s large industrial park several Barret, one of the chiefs of mainte- miles from the plant, headquarters nance. “With all the measures we of some of France’s top companies take here, it cannot be an accident, including Airbus Industries, the air- To me this was a deliberate act.” craft manufacturer, and a branch of eirms. “I couldn’t breathe. My wife Managers of AZF said the site was the European Space Agency. started screaming, it’s a plane, it’s a subject to rigid controls and inspec- The events of Sept. 11 had already plane. She had been watching on TV tions. The last inspection in May this cast a different li^t on some other what happened in America.” year reportedly had found no abnor- recent incidents. Police investigators The AZF chemical works, on a 40- malities. said that since the attack in America acre site flanking the Garonne River, Philippe Dufetelle, a physician and they had renewed their inquiry into a is France’s largest manufacturer of deputy mayor of Toulouse in charge recent robbery of 18 canisters of fertilizers, along with other products. of environmental affairs, said a new bottled gas from a local vendor, but Built in 1924, it was later modernized site for the chemical works had been that they so far had turned up no link and bought by the oil and chemical found several years ago. But the to either suspected terrorists or the conglomerate Total-Fina-Elf. It em­ management and the workers trade disaster at the chemical plant. ploys 470 workers, and when the ex­ plosion occurred shortly after 10 a.m. last Friday, the working day had just begun. Gathered at a makeshift funeral parlor on Sunday, workers and their families bade farewell to 22 col­ leagues who were killed. Large men sat silent in tight circles, their faces blank. Jean Thomas, a worker with 26 years at the plant, said he and his workmates had gone over the disas­ ter a hundred times without coming up with an answer. “We’ve been around ammonium nitrate for years. Believe me, it does not just blow up. You have to set it on fire." Tor investigators, the epicenter of the disaster is a 150-foot-wide crater, now filling with water, once a ware­ house holding the 300-ton stock of fertilizer. When it blew up, the explo­ sion caused earth tremors measur­ ing a magnitude of 3.4 on the stand­ ard seismic scale. Ammonium nitrate is the kind of

Pnae s oP5 NYC-WTC_000152324