So there they were, these construction workers, just minding their business… and FOOM! Three floors of a Bronx high school were wrecked, with one floor’s wall and windows blown into the skreet, and three workers inside near Ground Zero were more or less wrecked, too.
So what happened? How did we get from construction to FOOM? Basically, inflammable gases, the unfortunate fact that these workers may not have paid attention in the science labs in their high schools, and human stupidity. But mostly, as ever, human stupidity.
Construction workers were remodeling a science laboratory on the sixth floor of Marble Hill’s John F. Kennedy High School at about 8 p.m. when a powerful explosion destroyed parts of the fourth, fifth and sixth floors of the building, sending three workers to the hospital, one in serious condition.
Sources say the workers were supposed to shut off the gas to the lab at a source and then pump another less volatile but noxious fuel into the line, pushing the dangerous and odorless gas out the other end.
When the line is completely free of the odorless fuel, workers would normally smell the secondary fuel, which signals that the line is safe to work around.
But sources say a worker allegedly decided to test the line by striking a match near its tip — and it exploded with such force that a wall facing Terrace View Ave. was blown out onto the street.
Ah, we knew there had to be a logical explanation for the FOOM. He is presumably the worker who was in critical condition with burns and trauma.
But, while he’s presently hors de combat, human stupidity is still very much in the game, here being deployed by New York’s allegedly brilliant (just ask him) mayor, Bill de Blasio:
“I do believe that this was a mistake,” Mayor Bill de Blasio told 1010 WINS Friday afternoon.
No $#!+? You think so?
Any more insights for us, Bill, from the steel-trap mind that brought us that one?
“It does not appear that was something that should have bee[n] done.”
You don’t say. What was your first clue, the hospitalized worker, or the blown-up school?
Like the saying goes, it is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness, unless somebody opened up the gas valves.
Kevin was a former Special Forces weapons man (MOS 18B, before the 18 series, 11B with Skill Qualification Indicator of S). His focus was on weapons: their history, effects and employment. He started WeaponsMan.com in 2011 and operated it until he passed away in 2017. His work is being preserved here at the request of his family.
7 thoughts on “When Guns are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Matches”
You’d think he’d smell the gas to begin with. Especially enough to generate an earth shattering kaboom.
Full disclosure, I have singed my eyebrows in my current job. Early on, I learned not to look in the back of the tube furnace filled with H2 right as I opened the exit door- tiny amount of H2, just a little pop but enough to singe the old eyebrows.
I thought they suffused the natural gas with odorants these days.
As they say ” don’t be sorry, be safe “
I have heard of accidents happening where they forgot to infuse the rotten egg smell. But that is such a rare occurrence.
@wm
ot:
http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/08/you-have-the-right-to-bear-arms-but-what-about-electrical-arms-or-stun-guns/
The Massachusetts Supreme Court is s grazing ground for undistinguished Party hacks, as are all the state courts. Imagine them facing a 1st Amendment case and concluding that a television station is a “thoroughly modern invention” unknown in 1789. But in MA, the courts are where politicians go to retire. Well, the ones that don’t go to club fed.
Let’s see, inflammable…must be like inaudible or inedible, so it oughta just blow out the match.
Right?
Inconceivable!
That’s why the neologism “flammable” was created in the 1950s or 60s… because of urban legends of knuckleheads trying to extinguish their cigs in containers labeled “Inflammable.”
As the saying goes, “FOOM!”