Similar tanker blasts have killed hundreds of people across African countries in recent years — usually involving victims trying to bottle the leaking fuel.
One witness said, "There are dead bodies all around... There are people screaming, people burning alive... The firefighters came, but there was nothing they could do by then... The blaze was so much. There was nothing they could do to contain the inferno.”
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Max Rockatansky could not be reached for comment.
Outside affluent countries, life is cheap.
"didn't seem dangerous . . .". Its fuel! People got to up their game.
That's how tsunami used to kill so a lot of people. The trough would arrive first drawing the water out exposing stranded fish. People would go out to collect the fish. Waves are 20 minutes of so in wavelength. The the crest would rise up as it felt the bottom, rushing in carrying people along, the dragging them out to sea as the next trough arrived.
A sudden bounty is often a high risk trap.
Similar incidents have frequently occurred in Nigeria. Pipelines either develop leaks--or more often get "tapped" by the locals--- to steal/save fuel. The results end in flames or tears or both.
That's just horrible. I'll say this- as a fossil fuel guy. Windmills might leave you in the dark, but they won't burn you alive.
This is horrible. I wish the best for the survivors, and may the dead rest in peace.
But goodness, can't the government do some kind of campaign for "stay away from leaking or spilled gasoline after an accident"? I can't even comprehend what would cause people to move towards a tanker that was in an accident, much less try to collect gasoline that's leaking out. I realize they may be desperate people, but still. I can barely handle a brief and mild burn from cooking food. To put oneself in danger of gasoline burns is so beyond what's rationale.
Anyway, I don't want to sound snide, like I'm criticizing the victims. But if this is common across Africa, then the people need to be educated. I'm not normally one for government campaigns, but this could be an exception.
And here we thought the price of fuel was too expensive in the U.S.
What a horrific mess.
What a sad story. Gasoline is extremely dangerous and I'm surprised that we don't have more accidents with it. Remember during that recent fuel shortage in the South when people were putting gas into plastic bags and they had to get the word out to people to stop doing that.
Got to be a Darwin event.
Sooner or later deer in Wisconsin will evolve to avoid cars.
These tragedies are, as the article says, frequent and horrifying. Still, I wonder how many times a tanker (or a pipeline) leaks, people line up to collect the leaking fuel, and it doesn't result in an explosion and scores dead. I have a suspicion that if there were no tragedy, it wouldn't become a news item at all. We don't know what African perspectives on such incidents are; they might be very common, and potentially deadly but still worth the risk, rather than "people are inevitably killed whenever this happens," which is the perspective we get from US media.
In Cambodia, the tuk-tuk drivers buy gasoline at corner stands.
The gas is in Johnny Walker bottles.
The sellers transfer gas from big tanks into the whisky bottles at home, often inside the house or hut.
Our driver's brother and family had been killed in a blaze a few years earlier because they were transferring in the house around an open flame. Go figure.
Just AWFUL. So sad when people are that desperate. Heartbreaking.
All but the most primitive person deep in the interior of New Guinea knows that gasoline explodes and that it does so when it contacts flame or spark. Yet a few hundred people here thought that there was no chance that some idiot would light a cigarette or scrape a shoe plate against the pavement. Charles Darwin wrote about this.
Sometimes "free stuff" isn't worth the price you have to pay for it.
can a cell phone spark be enough? probably.
Darwin in action.
"Similar tanker blasts have killed hundreds of people across African countries in recent years"
Which, presumably, Africans know. So why -- ? And assuming they do happen frequently, why all the tanker blasts in the first place?
The Left wants to drive gasoline prices up to $20 per gallon in order to save the planet. This is coming to the US.
If gasoline prices keep shooting up here in the US, we can expect stuff like this to happen in the inner cities.
Actually, contrary to loudogblog, gasoline is not terribly dangerous. In fact, liquid gasoline will not burn. You can try to imitate a Hollywood action movie: Pour gasoline in a plate. Then drop a cigarette or match in it. The gasoline won't ignite. It's only gasoline vapor that will ignite.
Had current US safety standards been in effect, say, in the early 1900's, no way would gasoline be allowed to be dispensed the way it is now.
Relative safety is a luxury that we have that prevents most of us from appreciating the poverty of people in under-developed countries and the risky behaviors that such people regularly undertake out of economic desperation. Our forebears in even the last few centuries worked incredibly dangerous jobs or engaged in deadly activities because it was that or they and their families starved. These people are not stupid or ignorant, but they live such precarious existences that the risks in gathering resources in such a hazardous manner makes sense to them. I pray that our safety coddled luxury doesn't reduce us to these straits. I am fairly certain that the American experience and our education system has rendered us so ignorant of the ability to deal with abject poverty that mass casualty incidents like these would be even more frequent if our positions were reversed with these people. I wonder how many people in that country died because crowds of presumably educated people rush the stage of a rap concert and trampling their fellows.
>Roger Sweeny said...
Actually, contrary to loudogblog, gasoline is not terribly dangerous. In fact, liquid gasoline will not burn. You can try to imitate a Hollywood action movie: Pour gasoline in a plate. Then drop a cigarette or match in it. The gasoline won't ignite. It's only gasoline vapor that will ignite.<
*Please*, don't anyone try this! This is sophistic nonsense and what is being suggested is extremely dangerous. Sure, liquid gasoline doesn't burn but, except at low temperatures, wherever there is free gasoline - like on a plate - there is very flammable gasoline vapor around it. You try this experiment and you are going to get toasted.
Remember during that recent fuel shortage in the South when people were putting gas into plastic bags and they had to get the word out to people to stop doing that.
Remember when the photo that was being shared turned out to be from two years ago in Mexico?
Roger Sweeney displays antivaxer-level risk assessment skilz
Temujin said...
"That's just horrible. . . . Windmills might leave you in the dark, but they won't burn you alive."
From the Texas Monthly. 2/19/21:
For the record, no one who is well-informed about energy is suggesting that Texas, or, for that matter, the nation or the world, can or should operate without fossil fuels - in at least the next several decades, beyond which predictions are meaningless. The relevant question is how much more an electric grid can rely on variable renewables such as wind and solar without rendering the system so unstable that it becomes prone to crashing.
Texas found out just how terrible freezing to death can be. Two hundred ten people died, mostly from hypothermia but multiple deaths caused by motor vehicle accidents, carbon monoxide poisoning, exacerbation of chronic illness, falls, and fire - between Feb. 11 and March 5, 2021.
Andrew said...if this is common across Africa, then the people need to be educated.
That’s a take. My take is, if that’s common across Africa, then the people need better governance. Instead of telling them to be less desperate, maybe help them be less desperate.
They need to watch more American TV and movies so they'll know that every wrecked vehicle will explode.
Roger Sweeny said...
Actually, contrary to loudogblog, gasoline is not terribly dangerous. In fact, liquid gasoline will not burn. You can try to imitate a Hollywood action movie: Pour gasoline in a plate. Then drop a cigarette or match in it. The gasoline won't ignite. It's only gasoline vapor that will ignite.
A camping trip I picked up in Mexico. Take a coffee can full of gasoline, and light it. The vapors off the top will burn, but, of course, the liquid won't. It will burn all night. Just don't kick over the can. It should be a steel can, if you can find one. Oh, and you should probably use unleaded too. That was an issue in 1982.
Temujin said...
"That's just horrible. I'll say this- as a fossil fuel guy. Windmills might leave you in the dark, but they won't burn you alive."
And I wonder how these windmills affect the air flow over the nation. By taking energy out of the air you slow down the wind... we have currents that go across the USA... does this affect the climate? Kind of like slowing down the Gulf Stream water current around the east coast... would that affect temps all across the Americas?
And those windmills.. how much energy did it take to make them? Service them? And the capacitors/batteries needed to store the energy.. how much pollution?
Windmills, like solar cells, are not a wise choice to get energy from. Nuclear power is the wise choice. But until WOKES and far left liberals go away.. we will have these inefficient ways touted as 'the' energy source.
P.S. winter is coming.. I suggest a good backup generator and some... gas to run it.
MrEdd,
I wonder how many people in that country [=Sierra Leone, for those soooo "educated" that they think all African nations are basically interchangeable] died because crowds of presumably educated people rush the stage of a rap concert and trampling their fellows.
You think 50,000 young people at a rap concert, hundreds of whom tore down and ran through a security checkpoint hours before the fatal incident, are "presumably educated"? I don't know where you got that impression.
dwshelf said...
Got to be a Darwin event.
Sooner or later deer in Wisconsin will evolve to avoid cars.
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Sooner or later humans will evolve to avoid Milwaukee.
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