The Big Boom

Today at school the lights blacked out for a few seconds. Since my room has no windows (only two doors with some panes of glass), it was dark like a cave when the lights went out. I didn't know it at the time, but a local refinery about a mile away from our school had an explosion. A home near the refinery had all its windows blown out and the house was pushed off of its foundation. It is now uninhabitable. Many other homes nearby also sustained some damage to windows, soffits, garage doors etc. Fortunately, in the worst damaged homes the people weren't home at the time of the explosion and no people were injured. The explosion was heard and felt as far away as parts of Farmington. Our school must be pretty solidly built because it didn't shake. A cloud of dust from the refinery left a white powdery soot on all of the cars in our parking lot. It looked like a light dusting of snow. I washed my car after school to get rid of the dust. Jan and Buzz's house is up the block from where the explosion occured, and it had some (hopefully) minor damage, but the insurance company for the refinery seems to be moving quickly to help the homeowners. So far there has been no explanation for the cause of the explosion. I share a room with the IT guy and he spent the rest of the day addressing computer problems that resulted from the power outage at school.