Rocket Talk: Can Sunday Subway Service Start Sooner?
Newsstand: November 19, 2009
Gender Studies Coming to a High School Near You
Please Insert Station and Try Again
The Art of Not Knowing
A series of huge explosions near Keele and Wilson at 3:50 a.m. this morning (skip to 1:50 in this video or 0:53 in this one for the most dramatic ones) were felt across Toronto, after a fire started at Sunrise Propane Industrial Gases at 54 Murray Road—a fire that is only now dying down. Since then, thousands of people have been evacuated, and the 401 has been closed, as have Downsview, Wilson, and Yorkdale TTC stations. Only minor injuries have been reported, but 680 News reports that fire officials told them one person is unaccounted for.
The National Post, Globe, and Star have all been providing coverage, while Rannie Turingan has been posting photos and a video on photojunkie, BlogTO's been live-blogging it since 6:50 a.m., and members of the Toronto LiveJournal Community are sharing their stories.
Photo by photojunkie from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
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Oh, finally Torontoist covers something that happened outside of the downtown core.
I was working at my desk when the sound of what seemed like very nearby thunder. I looked up at the radar and didn't see any showers. So I messaged my friend:
From: accozzaglia
Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 03:49:16 -0400
To: Eve N.
"Well, that's interesting: a prominent thunderclap at 3:48a when the radar shows no precip activity in a 40km radius (even that is only light showers)."
Followed by:
From: accozzaglia
Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 03:49:38 -0400
To: Eve N.
"It almost makes me wonder if sth explodeded."
Then I looked out the window (this was near Dupont). The sky was glowing reddish-orange. Were it less ruddy, I'd have mistook it for sodium vapour light pollution, but the colour was too deep, too varied, and a chain of smaller rumblings kept happening. So I left to see where and what it was. By the time I reached about Rogers and Keele, still unaware of what it was, I get this response:
From: Eve N.
Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 09:41:24 GMT
To: accozzaglia
"680 says a propane depot blew out...danger is ongoing....no word on injuries yet but over 20 indiv. explosions."
So I returned home. Nasty circumstances, that.
Also, awesomeologists lose their bite when they have a chip on their shoulder. It's like going from a sassy, tart Granny Smith -- fresh and still warm from the sun-drenched tree, to a mealy, inept Red Delicious in February after sitting in storage for four months.
I like the narration on video 2
When I'm the one that's challenging dogma, I'll never loose my freshness.
But you will lose your spelling ability.
This woke my wife and I up last night and freaked the hell out of us, and we couldn't sleep for a while why we tried to find out what was going on.
Funnily enough, that Live Journal page was the only thing we stumbled upon showing any mention of it. Seeing other people's reactions and getting some information helped calm us down a bit (we ranged from thinking either Godzilla or nuclear attack.)
Kudos to the blogosphere for getting this info out there, and shame on CP24 and the other TV news outlets for not having anything for at least an hour and half (and only a text snippet headline after that.) Honestly, why couldn't CP24 get someone on there live immediately after this started happening? It would have been a good public service, and this thing is really in their mandate to do.
Wouldn't that be so awesome if it was Godzilla though?!
Not gonna lie, it definitely reminded me a lot of the initial panic scenes of Cloverfield.
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbw_K8pfNfo
You can see the shockwave.
There's palpable disappointment in Ann Rohmer's voice every time she mentions there are no reports of serious injury.
totally Cloverfield-esque for sure
saw that clip on CP24 played a bunch too
this is all such a 'blogger' event ... newsmedia doesnt' stand a chance..so they keep interviewing flickr users and locals that have been blogging and txting it all day
680 News reported (and the Globe now confirms) that a firefighter was rushed to the hospital with no vital signs...
rek: Wow, that video is intense.
The CBC are now reporting that the firefighter succumbed to his injuries.
I can't believe I didn't notice this, I was up at the time with windows open reading, no music or tv. I must have thought it was thunder. The video of that fireball is amazing, just to think that's our city.
Speaking of cloverfield, do you think this was a viral markeing scam for cloverfield 2?
680 news were right on it. When the initial explosion woke me up and I heard more going off - I gathered my flashlight, bottle of water, phone and radio (yeah, I'm ready) and waited to hear what was happening. I guess they had lots of listeners calling in and that gave them a pretty quick indication that something was up.
it woke me out of a deep sleep. scared the crap out of me....
and i live 27 km from the blast site.
I'm far east from it, but I also heard it - windows shook quite a bit too. My cousin asked me if there were any earthquakes in T.O. but I just shrugged it off. Kinda wish I looked out my window for a longer time.
Too bad Superman wasn't here to stop it; he would have just iced a whole lake, lifted the ice up off the lake, and then dropped it on the fire. Fire put out, problem solved.
Solex,
Sure, that's all swell but what about the asbestos?
Oh, he'd find a way to suck it up and put it away safely-he's Superman, not Hancock. FYI to everybody-I was making a joke in the last post.
Yeah, but then there will be a situation where there is a peice of kryptonite in the asbestos then he will get weak and die from it, then we will have to go through all that death of superman shit again. I ain't doing that a second time!