Is there any witness evidence consistent with an explosion in the fin-fan coolers before the main blast?
Answer The witness at location 15 (the Oleum plant, Fig. 4) was on a roof top and could not see Section 25A itself. Not being distracted by what was happening to the structure and columns, he only describes the flames, smoke and debris flying above. He saw something consistent with the flight of Fan Rotor 9 with a cone of flames underneath. As he saw the flying ‘disc’ from the roof top and did not experience the blast until he was on the ground, we may reliably deduce that this event (whatever it was) occurred some 25 seconds before the main blast. Witnesses 1 and 3 at location 33 (Flixborough village) both report seeing something consistent with the fin-fan coolers having already shattered when they first looked at the plant. They were over ¼ mile distant from the plant and unlikely to have heard the 8″ line burst. As neither moved more than a few feet, we did not re-enact the interval of time between their first event and the main blast. Additionally, an amateur film taken from the s
