A propane company had a series of explosions at 4AM this morning, sending debris everywhere. The propane company is located a parking lots length from the main manufacturing building at Downsview Airport which houses the Q400 assembly line.
Next to it, is the Global Express, and Global 5000 manufacturing building. It has been raining all weekend here, so hopefully there were no airplanes left out overnight. It is not unusual to have 2 or 3 Q400’s sitting outside overnight.
The entire area is currently shut down by Police, and there was a reported ‘200’ plus large propane tanks that have exploded.
Photos are from two weeks ago, looking west. So explosions were from the left side of photo.
All the cars are storage of brand new Chrysler vehicles. There is a big plant in Brampton, just northwest of Pearson Airport (Toronto Intl), and this is where they park them.
Bombardier is the olde Dehavilland Company, Chipmunks, Beavers, Otters, Caribou’s, Buffalo’s, Twin Otters, Dash 7’s and 8’s all built here.
The north end used to be Canadian Armed Forces base, and now houses an aviation museum, Four Season Helicopters, and a BMW driving school, and a huge flea market - sad. Oh, and a park!
On a more serious note, one fire fighter lost his life, a propane worker is also missing (an understatement). Houses in the area have structural damage, and windows are all blown out.
Boeing paints the rudder of an aircraft as it’s being built. They do this so they can balance it. Bombardier, as evidenced by the picture, doesn’t. Anyone know why? I thought it was a common practice but evidently it isn’t, or at least Bombardier doesn’t do it
they arent. the CRJ-200 looks much different than the Globals, and the CRJ-700/900s based on the Globals (at least they look like they are based on them).
that is a Global Express of some kind in the photo.
NOTAM
080815 CZYZ TORONTO FIR
CZYZ PURSUANT TO SECTION 5.1 OF THE AERONAUTICS ACT, THE AIRSPACE
SURROUNDING PROPANE TANK FIRE IS RESTRICTED 2 NM RADIUS 4344N 7927W
(APRX 0.9 NM SE TORONTO/DOWNSVIEW AD) SFC TO 12000 FT MSL.
NO PERSON SHALL OPR AN ACFT IN VFR FLT IN THE AREA DESCRIBED UNLESS
AUTH BY THE TORONTO ACC SHIFT MANAGER 905-676-4509
TIL APRX 0808102100
Bombardier News Statement on the news, asking all workers not
to come to work tomorrow. Stated plant received damage in todays blast.
As for the Canadian Registry, you can click on Historical Register, it show
C-FRKL was cancelled on July 24/08 (it’s a Global 5000). You can also click
on ‘Exported Aircraft in last 30 days’,for some reason its not allowing
computer to access past the first page??? It should show where C-FRKL
was exported too?
I dropped by Bombardier today, alot of the area is still blocked off.
The snow removal equipment was being used to clear the ramp, taxiways, and runway of debris. Bombardier offices took the brunt of the blast, and I was told by a Bombardier employee that the inside of the offices were fairly ‘messed up’.
As for aircraft, the first bay was emptied out, thus the photo of the 3 Q400’s outside, so I’ll assume something hit the roof. On the north side of the hangars, was another green Global, and another Q400.
All the airplanes seemed to be undamaged. Speaking with homeowners, they were all saying their doors and windows weren’t opening and closing properly due to structural shifting of their homes.
I also saw a crushed bus shelter on the main street, about 3 time the distance that Bombardier is from the blast. Also railroad car pieces of tank inside the graveyard, with smashed gravestones behind the site.
Blown out windows all over the place.
The area still blocked off;
