Authorities in Minden, Louisiana, report that bright flashes seen in the sky over northwest Louisiana and loud booming sounds on the evening of October 15 were the result of a bunker explosion at Camp Minden—but could there be another explanation?
On Monday evening, hundreds of people from Minden to Shreveport reported seeing a bright flash of light in the sky as they heard a loud booming sound and felt the ground and their homes shake just before 11:30 p.m. Many residents in the town of Minden also reported broken windows and even some minor structural damage.
When reports first began coming into the Webster Parish Sheriff’s Office, the sheriff’s office initially said that there was a “possibility that a meteor did hit the ground.” Although at first it may seem like an odd statement, there was a meteor shower (Orionids) occurring on Monday evening, and people across a three-state area of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi had been reporting seeing bright flashes in the sky and fireball trails.
By Tuesday morning, however, Webster Parish Sheriff Gary Sexton said that the source of the explosion had been determined by “experts” to be an underground bunker containing explosives that blew up at Camp Minden, and that the “explosion worked exactly as it was designed to do.”
The bunker, which belongs to Explo Systems, Inc., was built and designed in the 1950s “to send any blast up instead of out to lessen the shock wave impact” according to Sexton.
A news conference about the mishap, which was scheduled for Wednesday morning, was canceled at the last minute without explanation by officials from Explo. An article about the explosion on KLTV Channel 7’s Website also reported that “When reached by phone, Explo Chief Operations Officer Terri Wright would only say he had no comment.”
Further evidence was subsequently provided by The National Weather Service (NWS), which, according to KLTV Channel 7’s Website, “issued a statement describing radar imagery showing a debris/smoke plume right around 11:30 p.m. approximately one and one-half miles southwest of Dixie Inn, which is where the Camp Minden Louisiana Army Ammunition Plant is located.”
AccuWeather.com ran an analysis of a “mystery object” that was sent flying by the explosion which was captured by radar in Shreveport. There had been “speculation” which “focused on the possibilities of UFO’s and meteors before the confirmation of the bunker explosion was released.” AccuWeather.com concluded that “this was a significant object, showing up at a reflectivity of 42 dBZ (which would normally be ‘moderate rain’), but it is also a very small object, when seen in comparison to the radar screen.”
But is there evidence to suggest something like a meteorite fragment? Joe Quinn of Sott.net (“Meteorite Impacts Earth in Minden, Louisiana—Media and Government Cover It Up”) believes there is evidence. He noted that residents in the area reported black soot raining down on their cars and homes after the explosion. Quinn says “I can’t say for sure, but what I can say is that there have been reports that overhead meteorite explosions, or just meteorite or comet fragments passing through our atmosphere, have resulted in ash falling from the sky.” Of course, the bunker explosion could have also produced the fallout.
Citing scorch marks seen in video shot by a KSLA TV News crew, Quinn says that the “scorch path is not consistent with an explosion from underground, especially a bunker that is ‘designed to send any blast up instead of out.’ Surely that would leave a gaping hole in the ground. Instead, what we see is a long scorch path consistent with a projectile hitting the earth from above at a fairly acute angle. In fact, it is rather similar to the marks left by airplane crashes.”
Quinn also examined train cars that were derailed in the immediate area of the bunker. “The train that was derailed shows definite evidence of having been hit by an object or blast wave that was moving along the ground (not up and out). Only one carriage appears to be covered in dirt that was pushed forward by the force of the impact, and that same carriage also appears to be the only one that has been literally cut in two (minute 1.27 and 1.35 in the video) with a force that was concentrated in one specific area.”
So what really happened on the night of October 15th at Camp Minden? Was there a spontaneous explosion at a bunker or could there have been some sort of meteorite fragment or something else which caused the explosion? We may never know for certain, but for now, an official investigation into the explosion will be conducted by the Louisiana State Police, the Webster Parish Sheriff’s Office, and the U.S. military.
http://www.gcnlive.com/wp/2012/10/19/barb-adams-big-boom-theory-what-happened-at-camp-minden/
Share this post...
