Warehouse explosion in Tianjin, China

And had there just been enough government oversight and control, Chernobyl never would have happened.

Oh, wait.

Fact is, human nature is the same, whether in government or private industry. Absolute power in either corrupts just as absolutely. Whether or not there is a profit motive to the enterprise as a whole, individuals will tend to look out for their own self-interest at the expense of the greater good. Checks and balances, and a tension between entrepreneur and regulator, are essential.
 
Pilawt said:
And had there just been enough government oversight and control, Chernobyl never would have happened.

Oh, wait.

Fact is, human nature is the same, whether in government or private industry. Absolute power in either corrupts just as absolutely. Whether or not there is a profit motive to the enterprise as a whole, individuals will tend to look out for their own self-interest at the expense of the greater good. Checks and balances, and a tension between entrepreneur and regulator, are essential.
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True and in addition, there is an element of "pay to play". The technologies and creations of our ingenuity come at a cost. Construction and use of our tech has it's inherent hazards. Try as we might to make it all risk free, there are always going to be screw ups.
 
Here is someone who decided that on second thought, he had somewhere else he wanted to be:

 
The Halifax Explosion in 1917 was pretty big, ~2.9kt.

The Manhattan Project Los Alamos guys used this explosion to estimate the probable blast effects of the A-Bomb.

I heard on the news that a bunch of firefighters are missing or dead. That's what happens to guys who run towards danger when sensible people are running away.

Thank goodness for guys like that.
 
N801BH said:
Or Union Carbide..... Bopal India comes to mind....
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Best indications are that one was sabotage, although there was a lot of half-assery by management there which contributed.
 
Huh, i thought the last river on fire story would be turn of the century.. Way more recent unfortunately:

http://www.environmentalcouncil.org/priorities/article.php?x=264

When Lake Erie – or more exactly the Cuyahoga River which flows into Lake Erie – caught fire in 1969, it ignited a firestorm of public outrage over the indiscriminate dumping of sewage and industrial chemicals into the Great Lakes.
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masloki said:
Huh, i thought the last river on fire story would be turn of the century.. Way more recent unfortunately:

http://www.environmentalcouncil.org/priorities/article.php?x=264
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And now, ironically, the Great Lakes have been so thoroughly cleaned that the commercial perch fisheries have been wiped out. The water is apparently so clear that the perch, once able to hide from predators in the murky waters, don't stand a chance.

Which is why, when you go to Oshkosh and order perch at the Charcoal Pit (on the edge of the North 40 camping area), it now costs more than filet mignon. They import most of it from Canada.

When I was a kid in Wisconsin (in the 1960s), lake perch was the cheap "junk fish" that all Catholic families ate on Fridays. Now, it's a delicacy, thanks to EPA's ever-tightening, never fixed rules and regulations.

Oh, and all those great factory jobs in my hometown? The ones that paid enough for a man to support a family? Gone. Google "Racine, WI" to see what happened to a once-proud blue collar factory town under the guise of "environmental protection".

(And, yes, I know there were other factors in the demise of our industrial base. EPA was just one leg of the stool that got kicked out from under those guys.)
 
Jay Honeck said:
And now, ironically, the Great Lakes have been so thoroughly cleaned that the commercial perch fisheries have been wiped out. The water is apparently so clear that the perch, once able to hide from predators in the murky waters, don't stand a chance.
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Unfortunately, much of that clarity is because of pollution of another kind. Specifically an invasive species called zebra mussels which filter the water and have led to very clear waters in the great lakes.

Added to that is that the mussels very effectively compete for space with the food the perch eat.

$250M a year is spent mitigating the effects of zebra mussels in water treatment plants and other public works projects.
 
Guy who got back here from China a couple of weeks ago has been following the story. He says that there were many tons of calcium carbide stored on that site. I saw that in news stories, too. He says that the firefighters didn't know it was there and they started hosing things down to stop the original fire(something else burning) and the water, when it hit the calcium carbide, generated vast volumes of acetylene.

That's how acetylene used to be made. I don't know if it still is, but also don't know what else the carbide would be used for. Anyway, acetylene is big-boom stuff. It makes industry's hottest flame.
 
Gotta say, ham radio commentary on this was more fun than PoA.

Must be because Bryan has been busy.

"Those little firemen were straight-streaming that stuff and that's a no-no..."

(Long pause...)

"I usually prefer it when my little fireman straight-streams."

I about ran off the road laughing.
 
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