Scores Dead in Kenyan Pipeline Fire

[joeybee12]

NAIROBI, Kenya — The word went out at 9 a.m.

The pipeline had burst — again — and gasoline was splashing freely down by the river.

The whole slum seemed to spring into action, with men, women and children grabbing buckets, oil tins, battered yellow jerry cans — anything to carry the spilled fuel. Even minibuses raced in from miles away, looking for free gas, a small godsend in a place where most people are jobless and live in rusty metal shacks that rent for $25 a month.

But then the wind shifted, witnesses on Monday said, and embers from the garbage fires that routinely burn by the river wafted toward the gushing pipeline. There was no time to escape. The fuel exploded, sending a giant fireball shooting up over the slum, engulfing scores of people and scattering bodies that were left in various poses of anguish, burned to the bone.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/world/africa/13kenya.html?_r=1&hp

As the article later notes, not the first time, and not the last...this is what our oligarchs make some people put up with.

[Ikonoklast]

1. They smash holes into that pipeline to get at the gasoline to sell.

It doesn't just 'burst', they use whatever they can to breach it.

Not smart.

[malaise]

2. Poverty makes it easy to be stupid

Believe me - I seen people take every worse chances.

[Ikonoklast]

3. It's infuriating, the people know they could get killed.

But the lure of some quick cash...

I don't think it's stupidity, it's desperation.

[joeybee12]

4. When you have no other choice, of course you'll do stuff like that...

It's heartbreaking.

[joeybee12]

5. You take such chances when you have no other choices...nt