The Roseville Yard Explosion | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror

I love how Fascinating Horror sets the context for these disasters so extensively. It really helps you understand the significance and reasons of these events on a deeper level.

Having been a volunteer firefighter, I learned some interesting factoids. When wood is heated & cooled many times over, it can lower the ignition temperature & convert the wood into a substance called "pyrophoric carbon". Instead of igniting at a temperature of 700°-900°, pyrophoric carbon ignites at 200°-300°, which could have easily happened due to the exposure of wood to heated metal caused by braking. My hat is off to my late former fire chief, Manny Ennis, for his invaluable training. God rest ye, Manny.

So rare to hear a story on this channel where there's not a clear fault of negligence or apathy, just a true freak accident (as far as we know I guess)

I appreciate this mans research into subjects. As a rail enthusiast, its good to see a YouTuber outside the railfan community talk about an incident, with accuracy. Too many times I see people get wrong names, or butcher events to squeeze as much info in a small amount of time. Keep up the good work!

I really appreciate your accuracy in your reporting of these events. I was 5 to 8 miles away from this event on top of a ladder, had just glanced at my watch at exactly 8:03 am when it happened. The concussion from the first blast was so intense as to almost throw me to the ground, even at that distance! The second a few minutes later was just as intense. I decided it was time to get down and find out what was happening. I really thought at the time that we were at war!

Very rare to see a disaster where all possible care was taken to ensure safety, and that no one died despite the danger.

I’ll pretend it was fate that I was still up at 4:30am so I could watch this right away.

At the start of this video, I thought the explosion may have been caused by something like gas or liquid fuel. Then the word bombs came up, and impending doom kicked in. It was miraculous no one was killed in this accident, and let's hope all who were injured made a full recovery. And after the annual April 1st video, it's great to have two FH videos in a row

My brother was on I- 80 on his motorcycle and saw smoke ahead. He didn't think much of it till he was close enough to determine it was the raiilyard. He had recently been in the AF at McClellan and knew what was shipped in by rail so he wound it wide open to put distance between it and him. The explosions started just before he got home several miles away. On getting there, his friend had already set up chairs and a beer cooler in the front yard to watch. His friend was still in the AF and knew exactly what was in the yard, saying the AF was informed of the fire almost immediately, and friends there phoned him and told him to bug out as they knew he lived nearby. My brother said it was the biggest fireworks show he'd ever seen. He currently lives in Antelope and says that railyard is the one thing he's scared of around there.

My dad was a civil engineer. He's now in his late 80's. I have told him I'm so glad you never worked on bridges or dams. Your channel gives me stories to talk about with him. TY

YEEEESSS!!!! I grew up here! I was friends with one of the victims of the blast. She was in her kitchen, then blast, then she was waking up on the floor with no windows and shattered glass everywhere. Then she realized all she could hear was a high pitched ringing. Touched her ear, blood poured out. She never regained hearing in that ear, her ear drum reduced to a circular stub of tissue. Eventually regained some hearing from the ear facing away from the blast. But the craziest part of this story? This almost happened TWICE. This is the first. The second time, in the early 2000s, unrecovered ordinance was triggered again, started another, albeit smaller, series of explosions. (Watching now, you might mentioned it. I had to comment though!) Also, AMA about the area. Spent about 25 years growing up there. Edit: chunks of unexploded high explosive that looked exactly like chunks of gravel were found everywhere. In suburban neighborhoods. With curious kids (who were of a generation lucky enough to be given bikes and told to go explore, haha). Also, the fire: maybe brake shoes, also maybe wheel bearings. Which is a huge fire. I know from multiple workers that maintenance then was basically "do as much as possible." Not enough time by far. As a result, wheel bearings would wear to the point the axle seized up, and now, you have one single point on a mile long train that's NOT moving, and everything just melts. 3200° molten steel, throwing spark and slag. Btw my friends and I used to collect wheel bearings that fell out of the hubs along the tracks. For a hub to just lose bearings? That's serious wear.

I am glad that no one was killed. Thank you for posting.

This is a strange one, no one was lax on the job, no corners were cut, and it appears that all the equipment was in good working order. The only thing they had was a guess that it might have been sparks from the brake shoes.

I was in a Roseville Hospital delivery room when this happened, having my first child, a son. Initially, everyone assumed the rumbling and the shaking shelves and windows was due to an earthquake. Earthquakes in that region of Calif are very rare, and it had been over 20 years since the last one was felt. Interestingly, a couple of years later, the day my second son was born at Roseville Hospital, it snowed for the first time in over 20 years. So, it's no wonder my sons are extraordinary :)

HOLY COW MY HOMETOWN! :D i had heard about this from my parents who worked for the railroad (not at the time of this explosion iirc) but never got a lot of details about it, just that it happened. i DO remember them finding the bombs in 1997 and could hear the booms from our house when they set them off. thanks for another great video!

I live on the edge of Antelope, close to Roseville. My dad told me about this and the non stop explosions and thinking they were being attacked. My grandfather who served in WWII knew they were military explosions, he still worked at the Air Force Base and found out what had happened very quickly.

I remember this event so clearly. I was 10 and lived in Citrus Heights. It was so loud and shook the apartment we lived in. My mom was asleep so we ran down and stayed with a neighbor.

I flew over it in a UH-1. The USAF at McClellan AFB provided an on-scene command post with radios. One of the radios malfunctioned and I was flown there to see if it could be fixed on site. Unfortunately, it wasn't and required to be taken to McClellan for depot level maintenance. Later in the day, my father and I drove up to Roseville to get my grandmother and bring her down to our house outside Sacramento.

Wow. I am a railfan myself and I had no idea this had even happened. What an incredible story. Overheated brakes as the prevailing theory...so typical in all types of railroad accidents. Sometimes, something like a hot box is simply missed, as meticulous as employees may be. I can't imagine the shockwave those people standing near that first major explosion felt.

Just because I heard Donner Pass mentioned, you should look up the history of Donner Pass. It absolutely falls within the 'fascinating horror' category