A 30-ton shipment of ammonium nitrate, a chemical used as both fertilizer and as a component in explosives, has gone missing during a rail shipment between Wyoming and California last month, resulting in four separate investigations.
railcar loaded with some 60,000 pounds of the chemical left Cheyenne, Wyoming on April 12, only to be found empty two weeks later at a rail stop in the Mojave Desert, according to a short incident report from the firm which shipped the ammonium, KQED reports.
The company, Dyno Nobel, made the report May 10 to the federal National Response Center, or NRC. The report also appeared last week in an NRC database of California incidents managed by the state Office of Emergency Services last Wednesday.
Ammonium nitrate is commonly used as fertilizer. It’s also an ingredient in high explosives and was used in the homemade bomb detonated in the 1995 attack on the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
Read more: 30-Ton Shipment Of Explosive Chemical Disappears Between California And Wyoming
