The Loudest Noise I've Ever Heard

At work today, I was out in the scale house loading a customer.  As I was sitting in my chair watching the scales, I heard the loudest bang I've ever heard before in my life.  Not only was it loud, but it shook the entire scale house. I jumped out of my chair and looked outside, something that loud had to mean something fell off the silos.  After taking a look around, I didn't notice anything out of place and everything seemed to be functioning just fine. 

I then noticed Steve and Randy (Ray wasn't here today, of course) walking down the loading ramp to check out the noise.  They were looking at the side parking lot, and I had noticed earlier that a flat bed had pulled in with a large dumpster loaded on it, so I just figured they had slid it off the back and that was the cause of the bang.

I finished up loading the customer and headed back to the office, nearly forgetting the noise.  Randy then told me the tire on the Kamatsu front end loader had exploded on the other side of the warehouse.  I went to see for myself and sure enough, there was a big gash in the side of the tire.  You could still see the dust in the air from the explosion.  

About 30 or so minutes before the tire had blown, I had seriously considered taking the push mower to that side of the fence to knock down the tall grass.  The only thing that stopped me was that the gate was locked and I wasn't motivated enough to ask what the combination of it was. I'm glad I didn't now, for 2 reasons.

First, with my crappy luck, I probably would've been standing right in front of it when it happened.  It either would have scared me to death, or killed me with the force of it exploding.  Secondly, if I hadn't been standing in the way, there's a chance someone may have blamed me for it, assuming that I had hit it or the mower had thrown a rock at it or something of the like causing it to pop.  I'd just assume avoid that predicament.  Especially since I found out the replacement cost of that tire was $4,200.  I sure don't want someone accusing me of breaking it and trying to get me to pay that kind of money.

Kamatsu WA450