...and then all hell broke loose...
You're probably looking at this picture and saying to yourself, "What?? That looks pretty peaceful to me." Well...look at it again. That's a full moon and it brought the highlight of the week with it.

After I left the Milltown flooding I can down to Carefree, IN to get some gas at the local Pilot station. I didn't notice much as I passed the Jasper Engines and Transmission plant just north of I-64. A lot was going on, however, as I would find out on the way back. I got my gas and headed back north and was just passing the plant road when my cell phone went off. It was one of my editors and she yelled, "They just had an explosion at the Jasper plant!" I just simply said, "I'm going by there now!" So now it all starts up again as I make a quick turnaround and pull into the industrial road.

It was obvious something had gone very wrong as I followed the first firetruck into the industrial park entrance. Hundreds of people who had evacuated the building were coming down the road toward me as fire trucks raced to the plant. Most of the people didn't seem all that excited and I found out later that a lot of them at first thought it was just a drill. That wasn't the case this time, however, this was the real deal.

I looked toward the northwest corner of the building and could see a cloud of white smoke coming from the roof. This was not a cloud you would want to stand in for a very long time. It wasn't the same kind of smoke you would see if you were burning leaves. What I found out was that two chemicals, 1,400 gallons of Ferric Chloride and 2,400 gallons of Sulfuric Acid, had been accidently mixed together in one of the tanks that morning. After a few hours of sitting and churning the pressure built up enough to where the tank exploded and sending a toxic cloud across the building. As the workers evacuated many of them found themselves coughing and gagging as their bodies fought off the cloud of Hydrogen Chloride in the air.

Emergency units from five counties and Louisville raced to the scene. What was ironic was that just five months before the county had had a table top exercise for a hazardous materials emergency with several similarities. A command post was set up at the highway and also a decontamination station for those exposed to the cloud. Twenty-six people were run through the unit and transported to a local hospital. Most of the injuries were to the respiratory systems, which the chemical has the most affect on. Fortunately none of those injured received a large enough dose to be life threatening.

The power of the blast could be seen by looking at the southwest corner of the building where a large crack and bulge was very visible even from the highway more than a quarter-mile away. On the roof an air conditioning unit stack could be seen to be sunk down 4 - 5 feet. I found out later that a wall in the break room was also bulged a good distance from the explosion. Several cars were contaminated by chemical, as is visible on the black SUV in the picture. It was definitley a situation where the injury count could have been much much worse. Fortunately none of the injuries proved to be life threatening.

Later in the day the Louisville Fire Department haz-mat unit went to check the toxicity levels around the building as the smoke subsided. When they returned they brought back data that showed it was safe to move to the building. A structural engineer came to make sure the building was safe to move around in. Personally I would have waited till morning so that everything would have had time to completely settle down. But that's just me.

It's not sure what will happen next. OSHA is expected to come in and do an investigation into why things happened as they did. Personally I see problems for some people at the plant with an accident that was completely preventable...but that's for somebody else to decide. The good thing is the full moon is gone now with 3/4 of it showing this morning. I'm glad to see things settle down at least for a couple of days. Around here you never really know what's going to happen next.

WATER WATER EVERYWHERE

Well...last week was a wild one to say the least. It began Tuesday night with a big weathermaker that came up from the south with a ton of rain in it. Flood watches went up the day before and everybody knew it was going to be a big one. That first night it began raining and raining hard. With the ground already saturated from the big snow just a week before the water had nowhere to go but the lowest places and eventually into the creeks and rivers. That meant problems for Blue River at Milltown, Indiana, who has seen more than their share of big floods.

The creeks came up fast and started dumping their load into Blue River that night. It didn't take long before the water began to spill over the banks and into the town. People hurried to get what they could out of their homes and businesses as the water came up close to a foot an hour at one point. By noon some of the homes were feeling the affects but the bad thing was more heavy rain was on the way, especially Wednesday night where 3-4 inches of rain was expected to fall. There was talk of the 1959 flood when water reached up to the local post office. One thing was for sure. It was not going to be a good night.

The picture to the left was taken on Wednesday and I put it here to give you an idea of how it got later that afternoon. Try to imagine the water just inches from the top of the very top rail. What happened late in the day had many people going, "Oh wow!!" With the water at the rail several witnesses saw a massive sycamore tree coming at the bridge with its root system aimed right for the bridge. The tree slammed into the bridge with a thundering boom then amazingly stood straight up from the water pressure. The water kept it up until its weight brought it down on the other side, slamming back into the water. I can only imagine how big some of the eyes got as they watched this happen in real time.

The next morning brought a thick fog to the town that resembled something out of a Stephen King movie. By 10 am it finally burned off and people began to see just how far the water had risen. Mother Nature did give the town a break, bringing the water up to the front of the town hall just down from the post office. As the water began to recede home and business owners came in to see how much damage they had to deal with. For some it wasn't too bad but for one man who had started some remodelling work it cost him 40 sheets of drywall he had stored inside the house. Most of the homes had anywhere from 2 to 4 feet of water to deal with. One little business, Castaways, was pretty much damaged beyond repair with one of its Coke machines somewhere well down the river. One thing the people did start doing was cleaning the mud out while it was still wet.

This last picture is something I've seen done twice now. Some of the houses and buildings had to have their electricity either turned off or on to start their cleaning as the water began to fall. That meant tripping breakers at utility poles. So what do you do if the water is too deep to wade in? Well you take a boat out to the poles to have it done. I have to admit to being a little nervous as I watched this worker from Duke Energy trip this breaker. The thing is you just never know what the water might do at the time. You never know if the current will change of if a sunken log might bump into the boat. This worker, however, looked like he had done this before as he calmly (well, he looked calm anyway) tripped the breaker off to a nearby mini-mart. No problem.

The water finally went down to where people could get in to clean things up. I headed for the house to first get some gas and then to get a bite to eat.....or so I thought.....but that comes next....

THE BIG ONE

The last couple of winters we hadn't really seen that big snow like you usually do. Last weekend, however, Mother Nature decided it was time unload a good one on us. For us it meant a healthy 10 inches of the stuff. As you already know I'm the adventurous type so you know I would be the one to take a long walk in the storm. I layered up with my Mt. Washington gear complete with down coat, down mittens, and even goggles to keep the eyes from being poked out by the snow being pushed by 30 mph wind gusts. I grabbed my hiking poles, stuffed my camera under my coat and stepped out in my 25 below Wildcat boots for a 4-mile walk to the interstate and back.

The storm was actually a two-day affair beginning Friday morning. It didn't leave a lot then but by afternoon had picked up considerably. There was a lull during the late afternoon then that night the sky unloaded. By morning we were up to about six inches on the ground. The winds picked up as well and drifts began forming. During the early part of my walk the snow came down heavily and needless to say there was very little traffic. What traffic there was was kept to a snail's pace with the road being just one lane. At one point I stopped and looked for a mile in each direction and there was nobody to be seen (that's the top picture). I have to admit it was kind of cool being there and hearing nothing but the wind blowing and the snow bouncing off your coat. Though I was out there in the cold by myself (but still feeling warm on the inside) I didn't feel in any danger.

By the time I got halfway back the snow began to slow down and people began the process of digging out. People were also doing a little more of getting out on the main road as highway dept. trucks worked to clean it off. And I did have a few of those people stop to ask me if I was okay along the way. I guess they're not used to seeing somebody hiking down the road in a near blizzard. (Of course I knew some of them thought I was completely looney toons too...which is okay. I've got a reputation I have to keep up with.) But it was a good workout for me. With some other big hikes coming up later this year those workouts will mean a lot when the time comes.

By the way, if you want to see more pictures from the snow storm you can go to our newspaper website at www.clarionnews.net. Go to the left column and click on Photo Galleries and just look for the word 'Snow'. I got a lot of pictures in those four miles.

TRAIL VANDALS

After the ice storms it finally warmed up to where I could get a hike in so I went down to one of my favorite trails in Perry County, Indiana, the Two Lakes Loop Trail. This is a trail that has been voted the best day hike trail in Indiana by Backpacker Magazine. What I found on this day, however, would have put it lower down the list.

The hike started out okay when after making my first creek crossing I began to find deep ruts dug into the ground by four-wheelers. When I spotted the first set of tracks I thought it was probably the DNR officers checking the trail. Later, however, I began to find ruts like these in the dirt. I know that at least two different ATV's were used because of the different tracks. Something that told me they were having a good ol' time was the trail of Bud Light cans they left along the way. Needless to say it kind of griped my butt a bit so I'm doing some venting here.

This picture will you what the weight of ice can do to a tree. Now you might first look at this picture and think the wind blew it down but you have to look all around you to know for sure what happened. If it had been wind other trees would have been blown over too and that was not the case. I have been in a big wind in the woods before and have witnessed trees coming down. This definitely was a case of heavy ice bringing down this pine tree. This most likely would have been from the second ice storm. When the ice melted from the first storm the ground was completely saturated with water. This made the ground soft and when this tree became weighted down with the heavy ice it simply fell over. There were a few other smaller trees the fell to the same fate behind where this picture was taken.

One good thing I saw on the hike was a couple of my favorite creeks were back up and running again with water. Last year's drought had completely dried them up and it was good to hear their bubbling again. Still, seeing what the ATVs had done kind of made thing a bit of a bummer. Mother Nature has a way of getting back at things like that though. I'm sure she'll find some way to let them it's not nice to fool with her.

ICE STORMS

Something else we've had since I've been away is two big ice storms. The first one left about a quarter inch of ice on pretty much everything around. It also made trying to walk a chore and it made driving pretty much impossible at one point.

If you're wondering why these first pictures are in black and white that was pretty much the way I saw it the first day with a completely gray sky. The color in the pictures was so drab it wasn't even worth using. Black and white seems to bring something more out in a picture anyway.

The second storm that came through was much bigger than the first. A full half inch of ice coated the trees and the weight was just too much for many of them. The sound of limbs snapping could be heard all over as the ice broke them like twigs. Pine trees were especially damaged by the weight of the ice. Despite the damage, however, it did bring a beauty to everything. When the sun eventually came out the next day trees, grass, weeds, everything glistened like diamonds in the sun. The entire area sparkled as the bounced off the frozen water. It didn't go away real soon either. With temperatures diving down to 16 degrees and not getting above freezing the next day the sparkling hung around for adventurous people like me to enjoy. Oh....I didn't go hiking in it either. I had thoughts of a big tree weighted down with ice coming down and landing on my head. I know I've got a hard head but it do have its limitations.

I did leave one picture in color for you. This is our front yard where we have our security light. This scene gave me a strange feeling. There were no stars or moon because of the clouds. The ice here, however, had a strange look to it with the light bouncing off of it. In once sense it looks to be like water on an ocean. In another sense it looks like you could walk on the ice and not break through. You would be surprise, though, how much weight it would hold. Some places I walked in the next morning actually held me up. Needless to say our dog did a lot of slipping and sliding on it.

It took about 3 days for the ice to finally begin melting. It still wasn't completely safe to be under the trees even then because the ice came crashing to the ground as it broke away from the trees. I didn't take the chance of looking up for fear of having my eye poked out.

Losing A Shelter

There was a loss here on New Year's Eve when a shelter burned to the ground the in the Harrison-Crawford State Forest. Though I don't know the exact cause I do have a theory as to what happened.

There was a hiker staying at the shelter when the fire occurred. (No it was not me by I had considered hiking the entire Adventure Trail that particular weekend by changed my mind because of rough weather moving in.)

When i went up to see what was left (very little as you can see in the picture) I found some burnt fibers that I'm sure either came from a sleeping bag or a heavy coat. My theory is the hiker had one of those propane heaters with him and got his coat or sleeping bag up against the heater and it ignited. Of course we'll never know for sure. On thing that is for sure is that it was a very hot fire as you'll see in the next picture.

In the dirt I found several pieces of metal that had become molten by the fire. At first I thought it was aluminum but it was to heavy when I picked it up. I believe it to be a piece of cast iron, possibly from a small skillet or something of that sort. After finding it I did some research to find the melting point of iron and found it to be 1,500 degrees F. That means that the fire was indeed a very hot one.

The shelter is going to be rebuilt from what I've been told but it will definitely be lost for a while. What makes this shelter so popular is that it overlooks the Ohio River and into Kentucky. Hopefully it will be rebuilt soon....and hopefully nobody will do something stupid to burn it down again.