Originally published at: An incredibly huge, toxic fire burns at an Indiana recycling plant that officials knew was a "fire hazard" (video) | Boing Boing
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Unfortunately, officials “were aware that what was operating here was a fire hazard,” according to Richmond Mayor Dave Snow, admitting today that “this was a fear for us.”
But, as always, the bigger fear about safety costs impacting profits prevailed.
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I unfortunately became a minor expert on major warehouse fires last year, which is something I hope most people never get a chance to do.
Even after this fire is “out”, there will still be stuff burning under the surface. It took a week to get out the one I was involved with, and temperature drones still showed subsurface burning after that. It’s been over a year and I still don’t have a clear cause - so much happened so fast that it’s almost impossible to tell - but these warehouses are only getting built bigger and bigger which will make this happen more. They’re not being built with fire walls, or at least not with enough that seem to help. The science of the ones in play is based on smaller buildings, not ones that are a block long. Once they start, you literally can’t do anything but watch and mind the perimeter.
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No idea about the specifics here, or who was at fault. But I do think it’s worth pointing out that in the US building new and better waste management facilities is, from a regulatory and permitting perspective, practically a no-go almost anywhere. Even upgrading is very fraught depending on what happened to get included in permitting language decades prior. As a result, we have a lot of outdated facilities still operating even when their owners are aware of ways they could do better, and ways they could become more profitable by doing better. There’s also often a tremendous amount of inconsistency in how we treat any given kind of waste depending on lots of bizarre and circumstantial factors.
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Well, that’s just great. They couldn’t wait for Earth Day to do this?
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That’s only 10 days away, it may still be burning by then, and the cleanup will take at least that long
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Did it include recycling tires? If so, Simpson’s did it…
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officials “were aware that what was operating here was a fire hazard,” according to Richmond Mayor Dave Snow,
“Sure, you’ll go bankrupt while slowly, painfully dying of cancer from the toxic fumes because we rejected Obamacare. But at least no wimmin can get abortions, so all’s good, right?”
/s
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Richmond Mayor Dave Snow
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Been there, done that.
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to be fair the Simpsons based it on a real incident.
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Any bets on the chance they cart away the burned remains and the truck carrying it jackknifes the entire load into a ditch in the state next door?
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