McMasterVille Explosion

I’m a living witness to something known as the, “McMasterVille Explosion”. CIL, the paint company, made explosives. Their explosives factory, which was a giant factory on the same grounds as the paint making factory.

One night the whole thing blew up. I was looking right at it when it went. Not just the explosives but thousands of gallons of flammable liquids from other parts of the factory all went up at once. It was estimated to have the power of a one kiloton explosion.

I lived on the side of a mountain called Mt. St. Hilaire a little over a mile away looking down at the factory site. When you see an explosion like that from a distance the land ripples like water, when you drop a stone. I was riding a bike, the ground shook me first then the air blast knocked me on my butt.

The factory was deliberately sunk into the ground and surrounded by a high trench wall in case it ever blew up so the nearby town of Beloil wouldn’t get leveled. So the explosive force got punched into the ground and the factory was blown straight up in the air. Tons of wreckage rained down for miles, no one I know of was hit by anything but many small fires were started all over the place. My next door neighbor found a train wheel in his backyard and it was red hot when he found it.