February 21, 2019

"A car powered by compressed natural gas was traveling through a bazaar in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, when the cylinder stored in the back exploded..."

"The blast flipped the car. It then ignited several other cylinders that were being used at a street-side restaurant.... A wall of fire surged across the street, engulfing bicycles, rickshaws, cars, people, everything in its path. The inferno claimed at least 110 lives in one of the most historic neighborhoods in Bangladesh.... 'This isn’t about poverty, it’s about greed,' said Nizamuddin Ahmed, an architect in Dhaka. 'The people storing these chemicals in residential buildings are rich — they have cars, nice homes, children studying abroad.'"

The NYT reports.

37 comments:

Darrell said...

More likely propane than CNG.

Yancey Ward said...

You couldn't pay me to drive a vehicle with compressed natural gas.

Yancey Ward said...

Propane instantly boils when the tank is ruptured, so I don't think it would matter a whole lot.

Darrell said...

Poor "Enemy of the People" NYT can't get anything right.

MadisonMan said...

My conclusion is that Nizamuddin Ahmed went to College. Has he read Gayatri Spivak?

Seriously, though, this sounds like an awful event. If you crowd a lot of people into a small area, the effect as a disaster is amplified.

mockturtle said...

And, let me guess: It's Trump's fault!

Darrell said...

In India they make an inflatable bladder to hold the biogas from sacred cow shit for home cooking fuel.

Seeing Red said...

The inferno claimed at least 110 lives in one of the most historic neighborhoods in Bangladesh

Where the fire codes are rigorously enforced.

Seeing Red said...

I do have sympathy, I do.

With the world awash in oil, this could have been avoided.

tim in vermont said...

Poverty is the scourge of mankind, and capitalism is still our best answer to it.

Danno said...

The rich or affluent in Bangladesh are probably living lifestyles that would make the typical NYT journalist to become aghast. They (NYT journalists) can't even comprehend how people in flyover country live.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

These things happen in shithole countries. Sad.

Ray - SoCal said...

Nice to start out the morning with it's greed faults. Fits the class conflict model, very Marxist, and Politically Correct. The architect seems to assume whomever ran the street cafe is rich.

And not a culture that tolerates corruption that led to little or no fire codes / building codes being followed, has a low value on life, and has a high density of people.

If corruption was reduced in Bangledesh, there would be a lot less accidents like this.

There are only 26 countries more corrupt than Bangladesh.
https://tradingeconomics.com/bangladesh/corruption-rank

n.n said...

Capitalism including retained earnings and private stewardship is a good system on a forward-looking basis. Socialism of a kind, or a combination of public and private smoothing functions is a good supplement.

As for the accident, each energy source has a risk profile, and its selection should be considered for suitability to purpose and context. This doesn't seem to be about poverty or greed. This seems to be about about poor, perhaps uninformed, choices.

Quayle said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Quayle said...

My daughter was studying in Cairo right around and after the Arab Spring demonstrations. At one point she lived 3 or 4 blocks off of Tahir Square where all the “action” was. I was always a bit worried about her physical safety, in a fatherly way. Or perhaps in a more neurotic way. My wife had the opportunity to go over to Cairo and visit her for a month. She came back and said “You should be worried, but not for the reasons you think.”

Some of the taxi drivers would put your luggage on the top of the car because they had converted the trunk of the car into a gas tank, putting in a bladder filled with gas that took up the entire trunk. The availability of gas was unpredictable, so they made these conversions so they could keep their taxi business going during the shortages.

SteveR said...

Anything under pressure is quite dangerous so add in a flameable gas and crowded conditions and death is predicable. Oh yeah, no real safety precautions.

SayAahh said...

Any farting cows around?

tcrosse said...

The language spoken there is Bengali, not Urdu, so this does not contribute to the theme of the day.

Gospace said...

Gasoline, diesel, alcohol, butanol, other liquid fuels are much safer, and easier, to handle than ANY gaseous fuel. And the infrastructure to move and transport them is well developed. I'm waiting for a huge explosion during a ship loading/unloading of CNG at an export/import facility. It's going to happen, the question is when, not if. My personal preference is that it happen over there somewhere, not here.

Scott M said...

Good lord. There are American conservatives living in Bangladesh and storing their chemicals in poor neighborhoods? I mean, since that's the nexus of evil, they have to be involved somehow, right?

Caligula said...

"Propane instantly boils when the tank is ruptured, so I don't think it would matter a whole lot."

It would matter because propane is heavier than air, and natural gas is not. The initial even was probably the propane tank rupturing due to overpressure, which would have allowed the heavier-than-air gas in it to flow down the street until something ignited it. This difference in density makes propane inherently more dangerous than natural gas.


BTW, some cities in India have mandated that compressed natural gas be used to fuel autorickshaws, as the alternative seems to be small two-cycle engines that emit a haze of nasty blue smoke. It's truly amazing to see the amount of noxious fumes one of these small (~10 hp) engines can produce.

Ralph L said...

The important thing is which fuel produces the least carbon dioxide. Safety and cost are secondary. Possible emissions from burning buildings and humans needn't be included in the calculation.

Pillage Idiot said...

Agree with Caligula.

CNG is much safer than liquid fuels for a transportation fuel.

It typically dissipates in an open space. Liquid fuels pool under the wrecked vehicles.

I read some of the original reports on the tests for CNG trucks (30 years ago?). They kept crashing the trucks at increasing speeds and offsets, yet they still couldn't get the tanks to rupture.


P.S.

The large ships are transporting liquefied natural gas (LNG), not CNG. A major accident on that type of facility will certainly be an epic catastrophe. However, the most risky parts of the process are isolated as much as possible.

bagoh20 said...

Let's not lose perspective. Forklifts run on propane. They are everywhere. The same portable heaters, and barbecues, and some dildos.

tcrosse said...

So the street restaurant was cooking with bottled gas rather than the more traditional dried cow pies.

Leland said...

It is architect that is alleging greed, yet he says the rich stored their gas cylinders "in residential buildings". How thin are the walls that are unable to protect objects and people in them? Who designed those walls? Why did the design them to be so fragile?

Fernandinande said...

Chawkbazar's Central Jail Pond got a 3.9/5 rating in 15 reviews

“This isn’t about poverty, it’s about greed,”

The greed-ravaged neighboods in google street views of Chawkbazar, Bangladesh, "one of Asia’s poorest countries", sure look greedy.

Oso Negro said...

As a chemical engineer, I would say it’s neither poverty nor greed, but ignorance.

madAsHell said...

"Have you read Sophocles’s 'Ajax' ever?

No, but I read the Cliff notes, and I didn't understand them either. Besides, there weren't enough skirts in the class to keep my attention.

Maillard Reactionary said...

Darrell @12:20 PM: Clearly you jest here, but traveling through Uttar Pradesh once (thankfully, on a bus--and inside, we paid full freight) I did see the cow pies stacked high around the domiciles of the rural proletarians. Apparently, once the cow is through with them, they are no longer too sacred to burn (after being suitably dried, of course).

One would have to guess that they provide a special bouquet to the grilled goat.

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Anisha said...

That's very sad news... Please ensure the safety and quality of the cylinder by purchasing it in the Best Gas Company.

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