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\u2014but could there be another explanation?<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 Many residents in the town of Minden also reported broken windows and even some minor structural damage.<\/p>\n
When reports first began coming into the Webster Parish Sheriff\u2019s Office, the sheriff\u2019s office initially said that there was a \u201cpossibility that a meteor did hit the ground.\u201d\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
By Tuesday morning, however, Webster Parish Sheriff Gary Sexton said that the source of the explosion had been determined by \u201cexperts\u201d to be an underground bunker containing explosives that blew up at Camp Minden, and that the \u201cexplosion worked exactly as it was designed to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bunker, which belongs to Explo Systems, Inc<\/a>., was built and designed in the 1950s \u201cto send any blast up instead of out to lessen the shock wave impact\u201d according to Sexton.<\/p>\n A news conference about the mishap, which was scheduled for Wednesday morning, was canceled at the last minute without explanation by officials from Explo. \u00a0An article about the explosion on KLTV Channel 7\u2019s Website<\/a> also reported that \u201cWhen reached by phone, Explo Chief Operations Officer Terri Wright would only say he had no comment.\u201d<\/p>\n Further evidence was subsequently provided by The National Weather Service (NWS), which, according to KLTV Channel 7\u2019s Website, \u201cissued 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.\u201d<\/p>\n AccuWeather.com<\/a> ran an analysis of a \u201cmystery object\u201d that was sent flying by the explosion which was captured by radar in Shreveport.\u00a0 There had been \u201cspeculation\u201d which \u201cfocused on the possibilities of UFO\u2019s and meteors before the confirmation of the bunker explosion was released.\u201d \u00a0AccuWeather.com concluded that \u201cthis was a significant object, showing up at a reflectivity of 42 dBZ (which would normally be \u2018moderate rain\u2019), but it is also a very small object, when seen in comparison to the radar screen.\u201d<\/p>\n But is there evidence to suggest something like a meteorite fragment?\u00a0 Joe Quinn of Sott.net<\/a> (\u201cMeteorite Impacts Earth in Minden, Louisiana\u2014Media and Government Cover It Up\u201d) believes there is evidence.\u00a0 He noted that residents in the area reported black soot raining down on their cars and homes after the explosion.\u00a0 Quinn says \u201cI 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.\u201d \u00a0Of course, the bunker explosion could have also produced the fallout.<\/p>\n Citing scorch marks seen in video shot by a KSLA TV News<\/a> crew, Quinn says that the \u201cscorch path is not consistent with an explosion from underground, especially a bunker that is \u2018designed to send any blast up instead of out.\u2019 \u00a0Surely that would leave a gaping hole in the ground. \u00a0Instead, 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<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Quinn also examined train cars that were derailed in the immediate area of the bunker.\u00a0 \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n So what really happened on the night of October 15th<\/sup> at Camp Minden?\u00a0 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?\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n