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Richard Jernigan -> RE: Did y'all see what happened in my home country today? (Aug. 5 2020 19:49:25)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Piwin
I don't think I've ever seen an explosion that size... Truly horrific.
The largest explosion I have seen--so far--was at Medina Base at San Antonio, Texas. Adjacent to Lackland Air Force Base, atomic weapons were stored there--may still be. My mother was in a severe auto accident in the fall of 1963, and was in a room on the top floor of the large Air Force general hospital on Lackland for several weeks while she recovered.
Visiting her, I stood at the window, looking at the sunset over Medina base. Suddenly a large mushroom cloud shot up from the underground storage facilities. As I watched the shock wave kick up dust while it travelled across the dry landscape toward us, I thought, "Well, this must be it."
Turns out it wasn't. The building rocked back more than a foot and a half, but remained intact. The wall didn't strike me until near the end of its displacement, resulting only in a few small scratches and bruises. The window where I stood was cracked, but did not shatter like some below it. The explosion was in a fairly large store of conventional explosives, at a distance of a few miles from the hospital.
It was one of a handful of times I thought I saw the approach of certain death. Those experiences have not made the inevitable prospect any more attractive.
But I would prefer a sudden death to many I have seen.
It is the injury, grief and bereavement of the Beirut survivors which is so terrible.
RNJ
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