How strong were Eric and Dylan expecting the bombs to be? Since the library is right above the cafeteria, a strong enough bomb could have killed everyone in the library, as well as the cafeteria. Maybe they weren’t expecting to have to shoot themselves. Anyone know more about this? How strong are propane bombs/how strong can they be?
Hope you don’t mind me chiming in!
Deputy Fire Marshal Rick Young spoke with the Governor’s Commission about the many explosive devices that Eric and Dylan had placed in different parts of the building. He voiced the opinion that the death toll at the school would have exceeded a thousand if it had not been for defective fusing of the explosive devices. The two propane bombs alone would have been powerful enough to collapse the school’s physical structure, which would have brought the floor of the library down onto the cafeteria below.
As per JeffCo’s report:
Computer
modeling substantiated by field testing indicated that had those two
large 20-lb. propane bombs detonated with a cafeteria full of students, most
would have been killed or severely injured by the resulting blasts and
subsequent fireballs. There were
approximately 488 students in the cafeteria at 11:17 a.m. on April 20, the time
the bombs were set to detonate. In
addition to the casualties caused by the explosions, the computer models
demonstrated a strong likelihood of structural damage and partial collapse of
the cafeteria and possible library above.