Mysterious booms not from El Dorado Chemical

Boom? Though business, not the actual plant itself, may be booming, rumors spread over social media that several loud booms had come from El Dorado Chemical Company — Some even citing an article that was published in 2012.
Boom? Though business, not the actual plant itself, may be booming, rumors spread over social media that several loud booms had come from El Dorado Chemical Company — Some even citing an article that was published in 2012.

By Randal Curtman

Managing Editor

EL DORADO — A Facebook post following some loud explosions around town on Saturday have resulted in a lot of confusion — including online rumors that El Dorado Chemical plant had exploded.

“Anytime there’s a big ‘boom’ we get blamed for it, and I understand that,” said Greg Withrow, general manager of El Dorado Chemical, on Monday. “But we didn’t have any issues this weekend.”

Withrow said that he was not sure what was responsible for the explosions heard around El Dorado over the weekend, but someone on Facebook reposted a 2012 news story about an explosion at the plant, and from there the rumors started flying.

“From what we understand, someone was blowing up tree stumps or beaver dams, and that got going as a story that El Dorado Chemical had a major explosion,” Withrow said.

The calls started on Saturday with concerned friends and family calling El Dorado Chemical to check on their loved ones, and the calls kept coming in all day Sunday and Monday, Withrow said.

“I just had a call at 4 o’clock,” he said. “I even had a contractor from Arkansas text and say that we were in his prayers, and to let him know if there was anything he could do to help us.”

Withrow was even getting phone calls at home during the Super Bowl.

“I had a customer call to see if the plant was up and running,” Withrow said. “We just want to communicate to the community that we had no issues, everything is fine.”

In May 2012, there was an explosion at El Dorado Chemical after a failure in a strong nitric acid plant, one of 11 plants on the site. An area about 60-foot-by-80-foot surrounding the reactor suffered severe damage.

No one was injured and no hazardous materials were released in an explosion at the chemical plant.

“When that article was reposted on Facebook, it just took on a life of its own,” Withrow said. “So all of sudden I’m telling people that the plant hasn’t exploded and there’s no damage.”

As to the source of the actual explosions, no one is certain, said El Dorado Fire Chief Chad Mosby on Monday.

“We heard beaver dams, and tree stumps, but that is all speculation,” Mosby said. “I got a bunch of calls yesterday and I told people that we hadn’t been called to go out to El Dorado Chemical. I checked with plant management myself and they said they didn’t have anything going on.”

Mosby said the mysterious explosions have been heard all around town, not just on the north side of El Dorado. The fire chief said another possibility is that people are shooting exploding targets.

“Tannerite is a mixture of two inert materials that are fairly benign,” Mosby said. “But when you mix them, and subject them to a high impact, like a rifle round, they explode. Apparently it’s more fun to shoot things when they blow up.”

Mosby said the fire department put some information on their Facebook page on Saturday to try and calm the rumors about El Dorado Chemical. “We were trying to get a little information out there,” he said.

“It just goes to show that social media is dangerous when it’s not factual,” Withrow said. “We had a lot of people reading it and then calling out to plant.”

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