The United States Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, most commonly shortened to US. Chemical Safety Board (USCSB), is the federal agency tasked with investigating industrial chemical accidents. That sounds rather dry, I admit... at least until you remember that "industrial chemical accidents" are the catastrophes that involve fireballs the size of city blocks, or gassing an entire town, or so on.

Leaving aside any intersection of current events & federal agencies for now...

Hey, did you know they have a youtube channel? I sure didn't!


"Low Pressure, Fatal Consequence: Explosion at Yenkin-Majestic" is an 18-minute video covering an April 8, 2021 plant explosion in Columbus, Ohio. It details the timeline + consequences and then goes into the USCSB's findings & recommendations to prevent future incidents. Notably to me, they do use a small amount of real footage, but most of the runtime's visualizations are done with (by today's standards) simple CGI. You will not mistake it for Hollywood's top-shelf magic. But... in spite of and because of that, I thought it was very well-made. They did a great job illustrating the scene during the incident, emphasizing the pertinent actor and actions in a way that flowed well and was easy to follow! For a video that was clearly made to be more informative than entertaining, it's superb.

The incident had one fatality and eight injured, some of them from the sounds of it very badly, so it's not exactly feel-good. But this is one of the nicest things I've found my tax dollars paying for in awhile: clear, easy to understand video walking me through industrial safety concerns that, even if it's not my job directly, I do kinda want to know on account of, y'know, living in the same country these industrial plants are located in.