So my sister calls & asks where the fire is she see's from her place 4 miles away from where I live. I ask what fire? OMFG a racing fuel plant a mile from my house has caught fire!
This is what I see looking down the backlane


& here is a link to my bucket of pics & vids

St Boniface Fire pictures by Rottidog - Photobucket

Here are some FYI's for the metric conversions & some other links.
The Global Winnipeg is really interesting as they have live twitter updates & a camera on the roof of their offices about 5 miles or so away from the fire. It's the 2nd link I think.
Massive fuel fire burns in Winnipeg - Manitoba - CBC News
St. Boniface blaze feeding off warehouse full of fuel
Update: Massive fireballs thrown into the air as fuel plant burns – Gallery, video | Metro#
300,000 liters = 79251 gallons of biodesel
170,000 liters = 44909 gallons of methanol
400,000 liters = 105668 gallons of racing gas
150 meters = 492 feet
600 meters = 1968 feet

In the global link/twitter they talk about 5 or 6 rail cars that are really close & the fire department wants the air crew to move back to a couple miles. A couple miles?! WTF I'm a mile away lol!!!

The vid "Fire Ball" in my bucket I was about 1/4 or less away when it went up... I could feel the heat on my face & through my clothes.

 

Damn dude!! I hope they get that under control soon. I don't know that there's much they can do tho. I'll be thinking of you (no homo) stay safe and keep us updated. Good luck bud!

 

Lol at homo... Thanks!
I'm ok, so far... but the 5 or 6 tanker rail cars that are right beside the fire kind of concerns me. I think it's the biodiesel that's burning now. All the high octane has blown up.
They have an airport military emergency crash truck that sprays foam that just arrived on site.
The live view is on the 2nd link.

Someone just tweeted a link about the truck...
http://www.rcaf-arc.forces.gc.ca/vit...1-RDDFC-01.jpg

They've evacuated people for 1/2 mile around it now.

 

So that's what it is. I heard about a big fire on the radio and saw the smoke from Kenaston Common Boston Pizza. I could still see the tower of smoke clearly when I got home in Niverville. I'm guessing thats about 17 miles (?) based on google maps. That's crazy, have things settle down at all yet? Or is it still going strong? Hopefully things don't get worse.

 

Seems to have mellowed. They have that foam truck from the airport there via police escort. I watched them start to douse the fire but they stopped. Something about flat bed trucks they need to bring more foam for the truck to mix with water.

Crazy chit really & only a mile from my place. 1/2 hr ago I still heard smaller explosions & my dog was freaking out lol (she hates fireworks etc & I live really close to the Forks & the baseball field so fireworks happen often)

This was one of the explosions I was able to get a bit of video of.
Raw video: Warehouse fire in Winnipeg - Evening News - Videos | Global Winnipeg

It's the one I felt the heat of it from 1000 feet away.
Oddly there wasn't any KaBOOM or anything, I suppose that's the safety precautions they have in place IE: combustible materials must be in an explosion safe container. Meaning if it catches fire it won't "explode" rather just go straight up in flames. Thank God! lol I don't want to be anywhere near 400,000 liters = 105668 gallons of racing gas in a sealed container going up in flames.

A company I worked for years back did fire safety, sprinklers etc. My manager would get nervous going into certain types of buildings. I asked why & he said because they have 'blow out walls'.
Walls that are made to blow out & not contain an explosion, compressing it & making it worse.
This company tonight had measures like that in place because that one fire ball I witnessed didn't have any sound other than fire. I'm thankfull for sure, because that amount of fuel to make that fire ball would have been ... yeah - devastating to anyone within 1/4 mile if it were compressed.

 

Damn! cool pics.

 

Glad everything worked out ok..

I could see the smoke from St Vital myself and was wondering what was happening and then I turned on the TV to see a mushroom cloud. LoL and was like Oh ****!

 

Cool another Winnipegger, welcome.
Jammaroon is in Niverville & he could see the smoke he says.

 

Is this part of the reason California's out of gasoline? Was this refinery making stuff for California's special "clean blend" gas?

 

I highly doubt it, we're in Manitoba & although this company did sell to all of North America I doubt they had the capacity to "fuel" California.
Maybe some of their blends made it into some products out there.