pendell
2011-04-17, 09:41 AM
Seen In Manitoba (http://www.altonaecho.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3071368)
Joyce Penner's day started off with a bang.
The Morris area woman says she's lucky to be alive after a chicken barn exploded just 50 feet from her house.
Penner had put the two children in her care on the school bus on the morning of April 8, and was settling down to work at her computer when, shortly after 9:30 a.m. she heard what she describes as the "loudest boom" she's ever heard in her life.
"It was just insanely loud and very sudden - like somebody set off a giant firecracker," she says.
"I'm so surprised I wasn't knocked right off my chair and that my ears aren't ringing."
She ran to the west window of her rented farm house, located five miles west of Morris, and says all that she saw was a massive cloud of smoke. There was no fire, and Penner says the smoke cleared within minutes.
"But even then, it still didn't register. I saw that my east entrance door was open, so my first thought was to go check on my dogs."
It was only after she walked across broken glass in her kitchen, and stood on the patio on the south side of the home that she realized that the large chicken barn that used to be a big part of the landscape was gone.
"It was like somebody chopped it up into little pieces and just flung it everywhere."
The reasonable solution, of course, is as Jerry Pournelle explains the phenomenon:
You can make a fuel air explosion of just about any flammable powder, as witness silo explosions. Chicken offal can make a very fine dust in the right circumstances. Only guessing, of course.
Well yes. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpmVds9kI1Y). Under just the right conditions you can blow up a building with flower, or sugar, or chicken "stuff" , as the case may be.
That's the rational, logical explanation.
Who knows what the truth would be? Did the chickens save us from a zombie invasion by blowing up the coop? There's probably a tale waiting to be told ... but by someone who's a better storyteller than I am. :)
Respectfully,
Brian P.
Joyce Penner's day started off with a bang.
The Morris area woman says she's lucky to be alive after a chicken barn exploded just 50 feet from her house.
Penner had put the two children in her care on the school bus on the morning of April 8, and was settling down to work at her computer when, shortly after 9:30 a.m. she heard what she describes as the "loudest boom" she's ever heard in her life.
"It was just insanely loud and very sudden - like somebody set off a giant firecracker," she says.
"I'm so surprised I wasn't knocked right off my chair and that my ears aren't ringing."
She ran to the west window of her rented farm house, located five miles west of Morris, and says all that she saw was a massive cloud of smoke. There was no fire, and Penner says the smoke cleared within minutes.
"But even then, it still didn't register. I saw that my east entrance door was open, so my first thought was to go check on my dogs."
It was only after she walked across broken glass in her kitchen, and stood on the patio on the south side of the home that she realized that the large chicken barn that used to be a big part of the landscape was gone.
"It was like somebody chopped it up into little pieces and just flung it everywhere."
The reasonable solution, of course, is as Jerry Pournelle explains the phenomenon:
You can make a fuel air explosion of just about any flammable powder, as witness silo explosions. Chicken offal can make a very fine dust in the right circumstances. Only guessing, of course.
Well yes. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpmVds9kI1Y). Under just the right conditions you can blow up a building with flower, or sugar, or chicken "stuff" , as the case may be.
That's the rational, logical explanation.
Who knows what the truth would be? Did the chickens save us from a zombie invasion by blowing up the coop? There's probably a tale waiting to be told ... but by someone who's a better storyteller than I am. :)
Respectfully,
Brian P.