Huge Tank Being Moved From Ponca City To Louisiana

A massive piece of equipment is spending Tuesday night in Bartlesville on its way from Ponca City to Louisiana.

Built by M J and H Fabrication, the device is called a contained burn chamber. It measures 130 feet long, almost 26 feet in diameter and weighs 500,000 pounds.

It's riding on a special trailer with 96 wheels and is being pulled and pushed by two semi trucks, making the length of the whole contraption almost 182 feet.

The rig will be escorted by troopers and other experts who will have to carefully raise power lines and other utility cables along the way because the rig is almost 28 feet tall.

M J and H Fabrication says it got the contract to build the huge vessel because of the infamous Camp Minden explosion three years ago. On October 15, 2012, about 100 tons of M6 gun powder exploded at the camp, creating a 7,000-foot mushroom cloud. Once the smoke cleared, the governor of Louisiana declared a state of emergency to deal with the millions of pounds of unsecured Howitzer gun powder left behind. 

The Louisiana National Guard hired M J and H Fabrication to build the chamber. The company says it usually takes two years to construct one but the crew constructed this one in less than half the time because of the emergency.

Follow the device's progress on the company's Facebook page.

Once it arrives at its permanent home, it will be connected to an environmental system. The old gun powder will be loaded inside and burned and the environmental system will scrub the pollution out of the smoke. The EPA says it will take a year to burn all the material at the site.

The plan is to move the chamber to Barnsdall or Avant on Wednesday where it will spend the night. From there the chamber is scheduled to make it to the Port of Catoosa  Thursday evening.

The plan calls for the convoy to go east on Highway 60 then south on Highway 123, then east on Highway 11, east on Highway 20, then south on Highway 75 to 116th Street North, then east on 86th Street North, then south on Whirlpool Road, east on 76th Street North, south on Mingo and then east on the Port Road. 

Founded in 1939, Camp Minden was originally known as the Louisiana Army Ammunition Plant. It was declared a Superfund site in 1989. After months of controversy, the EPA decided in May of 2015 to remove the gun powder through the contained burn process.