Just reading about the disaster was enough to leave heads shaking. But it wasn't until I saw this aerial view of the blast site in West, Texas, from Daily Kos that I truly appreciated that Texan "Lone Star" spirit.
Yeah, you saw it. You have a potentially high-explosive fertilizer plant built smack in the midst of a high school, a middle school, a playground and a retirement home.
But don't you know that any form of urban planning is simply creeping socialism?
ReplyDeleteI wish I was just trying to be funny but there's a certain constituency out there that really thinks that urban planning is just more unnecessary government intervention in the private lives and businesses of gun-toting, God-fearing citizens.
Sigh.
That certainly is the way it is, CuJo. The mind reels. Every time I look at that aerial view I just can't believe it. This is not some heavily populated, congested big city. This is wide open, country Texas.
ReplyDeleteIt's come to the point where we have to encourage them to build more of them amongst the schools, playgrounds and I would add churches.
ReplyDeleteThe best we can hope for is that they exterminate themselves cause it's clear as spring rain they ain't changin' nothin'.
Oh, Dana, Dana, please. Damn, I just looked at that picture again.
ReplyDeleteIt is my understanding that the schools, old folks home and homes were built around the fertilizer plant that was originally out in the sticks......which merely confirms the first comment from CuJo.
ReplyDeleteThat's even more astonishing, Koot. A fertilizer plant is akin to a munitions plant. I suppose the empty land around it is consequently dirt cheap which was why it was chosen as the site for these vulnerable facilities. Astonishing.
ReplyDeleteSeveral years back, Steve Croft of 60 Minutes did an item on undefended chemical facilities near or in the midst of major population centres across America that, if attacked with just a rocket launcher such as the RPG could unleash lethal chemical clouds capable of killing over a million people.
There were many major cities with this vulnerability. We probably have our own in Canada. Measures were in the works to have these sites hardened against terrorist attack but the chemical lobby successfully fought them off.
Croft and his subject were able to walk into one tank farm full of lethal fluids and roam around for a long time before company security even bothered to approach them.
It's not pressure cooker bombs that worry me. It's somebody with a couple of sticks of TNT or a rocket launcher attacking one of these installations when the winds are just right and taking out a major urban population with one shot.
"undefended chemical facilities near or in the midst of major population centres across America"
ReplyDeleteNow you're quoting the Tourist Guide for the state of New Jersey!