The Morning Call reports that a large gas explosion ripped through a neighborhood in Allentown today, killing five people, including a four-month old baby, and causing hundreds to be evacuated from their homes. Apparently the gas lines were installed in 1928, and this is the fourth such explosion since 1990. It makes you wonder about Easton, and other towns in the Lehigh Valley--how old are our gas lines? This explosion made the national news today...
My heart goes out to the families of the victims and to those whose homes were damaged and had to be evacuated. One couple was sleeping in their bed when their ceiling fell on them. They made it out ok, but how scary to think that something so tragic could happen so suddenly, without warning...
The investigation is ongoing.
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Having survived a house fire I can say that this tops the nightmare list. I feel for all involved, hopefully this prompts area gas companies to check there systems, though truth be told I sort of doubt it. The millions of dollars (possibly higher) needed to inspect and maintain such things may simply be a higher price than a handful of lives.
I'll be curious to see what civil litigation comes from this and what if any action results.
Our prayers are of course with the survivors,
David
has anyone reading in Allentown seen this neighborhood since the explosion? if so, please post a comment! what is the mood of the residents? do they see it as an isolated tragedy, or are they afraid that there might be more explosions near their homes?
less than ayear ago we called the police about a gas leak on 5th and ferry.within 10 minutes there were 5 police cars and a couple of fire trucks evacuating the block...it was evacuated for 2 days while UGI fixed the leak...we didnt even get a black raspberry ice cream at the purple cow for saving the whole wide world....thats not fair....I yuv U noel....tunsie
if UGI sends me a black raspberry ice cream from the purple cow for saving the world,I will share it with my favouritist Noel....
This country is very complacent about it's energy supply system and everything connected to it. Things like this explosion temporarily jog everyone's memory as to how unstable our systems can quickly become, but there is seldom any lasting impression as we slip back into daily routine.
I love gas heat and I love cooking on a gas stove. It's certainly a wonderful convenience. We also all need to understand that the fuel sources we use are only as safe as the infrastructure that deliver them to us - natural gas leaks happening to be one of the most horrendous and immediate examples of the consequences when something goes wrong.
Unfortunately Allentown and the Lehigh Valley are not exceptions but the rule as far as current infrastructure status in this country.
The American Society of Civil Engineer's 2010 report card for this country's overall infrastructure was a D with no individual category rated higher than a C+. (This is actually an improvement over our previous rating of D-.)
These networks were conceived in an era with a quarter of the population and a tenth of the physical building expansion than we have today...80% of everything built on the surface land in this country has been added since WW II.
If engineered, static supply lines buried deep under ground in a "first world" country and monitored by a public utility can explode without warning, wiping out whole neighborhoods, it makes one wonder how we can possibly be entertaining a future where natural gas routinely replaces gasoline in the vast U.S. auto fleet. What happens when the people who shouldn't be driving because of age or infirmity, drive while cell phoning, drive while lighting cigarettes and putting on make-up or just can't drive worth a crap are let loose with these gas bombs on wheels?
How trusting are we that many private citizens with little regard for anything will dutifully keep there cars repaired to levels consistent with widely held expectations of public safety?
The Marcellus shale has many implications for our future but one we are not talking about is how this supposed cornucopia of cheap gas will deflect us from the coming reality that we must get back to some reasonable consensus for public transportation, compact living arrangements and communities catering to people instead of cars.
Chrysler spent zillions on a slickly produced Super Bowl commercial to assert (assert being defined as "to state or declare positively and often forcefully or aggressively") that Detroit is not a burned out hulk and that the auto makers - a now clueless industry - will once again save the country from itself. At it's conclusion, Eminem - described by one observer as "a sullen wretch" - gets out of a black Chrysler 200 in front of a huge chorus at the Fox Theater, points at the camera and says " This is the Motor City...and this is what we do".
How cool would it have been, if instead, he had driven his 200 up to a new intercity rail station and got on a 200mph, Detroit built, passenger train to Chicago...then we'd have had something to brag about.
Well, I guess our insecurity about not being able to change the fix we're in leads to this type of regressive bravado and nostalgia...but I'm not buying it.
DRL
While natural gas is at least a step up from gasoline, we agree.
Still soon or late, wars or no wars we are going to be paying the prices that the rest of the world pays for our most used non-sustainable resource. And yes, we are going to fall even farther behind the rest of the world than we have.
We also agree on the infrastructure, simply put, it would probably be cheaper to just abandon our current infrastructure and make new then it would be to dig up, inspect and repair our mass of older wires, pipes, etc... that we depend on as a nation. Even at that we're talking billions, and with that figured in gas stops being quite so cheap, as the price will be paid by the consumer. We desperately need to start looking at European concepts of mass transit, Japanese, even Chinese mass transit models.
Anyhow, I've run on. But while we do at times disagree on some things, we absolutely agree here,
Peace,
David
With the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war, I for one think it is upon us to start taking our eyes of of the greater world and bringing them back to our nation . Time to secure our borders, give ourselves and our society a serious check up and fix what is broken before spending another dollar or another life on a world that doesn't much care for us anyway. Unlike many other nations in the world , we and we alone have the responsibility to decide our fate and that of our generations to come . It is perhaps not a shock that other nations and our own children look on us with little but disdain, while we cling to Tv versions of the past that never existed in the first place, and stab at each other with words of hate and blame, each seeking a pennies worth of advantage over the next.
I think it is quite clear, that our country, our states, and even our city need a serious gut check, and a far more serious reality check.
Anyhow, yes mass transit would be a start. I'd rather not be completely rid of the privately owned vehicle, but I'm not thrilled with being stuck with it, and I am. Mass transit in America is a joke compared to even many third world nations, and it would be physically impossible for me to work, see my doctors, shop, etc...without a car.
As we face the dwindling of the worlds non-replaceable oil supply, we need to think on options.
Or we are going to get even more third world than we already are.
We need to stop thinking that such things can never happen here, because they already are happening here.
Thanks,
David
TO add an option to the pile that no one has done much with in years, Nuclear power.
It's pricey to safely build a plant, and hollywood with a great deal of back door oil company money has made it nearly unthinkable, But sans something that can put out that sort of power, I have no doubt that the American people will be facing very hard choices within my lifetime. The world simply can't grow enough corn to make alcohol a viable option as a replacement for american needs, solar even with vast improvements is only likely to take a tiny percentage of the load and the price per unit is still out of the reach of most but the upper middle class. Bio fuels hold some promise, but we simply won't every be able to grow enough to do anything but dent the need.
In the end I feel that we need to seriously consider revisiting nuclear power, the electric car and of course, an even remotely valid national mass transit system. The choices are ours and with them the blame.
Peace,
David ;)
Please don't take this the wrong way, but I don't put such things out to kill conversation..but by the age of 7 or so I learned to put logic over emotion. Still, I'd absolutely love for someone to prove me wrong.
I am not stating an opinion, but what a fair amount of research shows as objective fact. With this as with many things, I would rather be happy than right, so if anyone has facts to prove me wrong...by all means do do. I'll put you on the x-mass card list.
Still facts even if they are at best a dark hope are some hope, a hope that we might do something with them, if nothing else.
By all means and gods, let's have someone argue against. I am not that close minded that I cannot be swayed, and I desperately wish to be.
So have at it. No one would be happier than I.
Peace,
David
I am going to add in an over due apology as well. I corrected Dennis when he said that cities were still a vital part of American culture. While it is true that they have fallen out of favor, from reading his post here, I believe that he was looking further ahead than I. They have fallen out of favor, but he is right in that with the coming oil shortages and the like the role of the city will increase in the future. And we will be dependent on them again.
So, sorry Dennis, I didn't get the reference at the time.
Thanks,
David
David, with regard to biofuel, you are right about not being able to grow enough corn to make biofuel on corn alone, but there are many other kinds of biofuel, among other resources are TRASH (which I love, as it solves two problems at once) and ALGAE.
Our wind and solar projects are still in nascent stages really, and it remains to be seen what can be developed in terms of concentration and storage of energy production when some real money is finally put into that research, as opposed to the R&D still going into fossil fuels.
As for nuclear--this is the ultimate energy source, considering there will never be a shortage of ATOMS to split, however, we have yet to solve the problems of where to store the waste and how to prevent mass destruction due to human error as in the Chernobyl incident. But if those issues are ever really solved satisfactorily, nuclear will clearly be the most powerful renewable and clean "burning" energy source that we will have at our disposal. That is a BIG "if" however...
The odd thing is, I think we Americans are likely to come at this piecemeal like we do most things, and that being so, the eventual outcome won't be so horrible.
Nuclear power BTW has been improving it's safety record and I think we can both agree that the marcellus shale thing as planed is likely to be on a par with Chernobyl , so it's sort of a moot comparison.
What I see more than probably anything else is that those who can weather the storm will, and the lower rungs of society , the dwindling middle class and the poor will be left to fend for themselves. We are already seeing major cuts in community funding, and are likely to see more , this is not likely to change.
Those who can become self sufficient will do better those who can't won't. The down side for us is that we are decades behind other first world nations that started addressing this stuff as much as 40 and 50 years ago, and we're likely to stay there.
You and Dennis both have some points, but in the end for any real change to be made, we're going to have to think ahead and act ahead as a people, and we aren't one.
Until that changes, we're kinda shagged.
Peace,
David
It funny, but to give a nod to a man far ahead of his time, Jeanette was just reminding me That Jimmy Carter was talking about exactly this sort of things when we were kids.
Oddly we're in exactly the same place we were then, having the same conversation as a nation.
With luck maybe this time we listen ;)
Peace,
David
re: Carter--yes, he was saying all this in the 70s, but we're not in the same place now, we are far more polluted--especially our water, and with the fracking for natural gas that is going on, it will only get worse.
David, I agree that fracking is as dangerous as nuclear power--the main difference being that fracking makes people deathly ill incrementally, where a nuclear accident is sudden and therefore more shocking and people are less prone to denial in a sudden major catastrophe. Fracking stands to pollute the drinking water source for 15 million of us (the Delaware) with carcinogens, neurotoxins and endocrine disruptors. If a nuclear power plant leaked and caused 15 million people to get sick or die all at once, we would react as a people immediately to stop it. But fracking pollution happens incrementally, potentially to the same effect as a nuclear disaster, but over time, so that it's less obvious, less compelling...
True, still we are becoming aware and sooner or later we'll have our next Jessie James. I've heard of people dying and bleeding out of all sorts of places due to fracking. Soon or late, barring real regulation of this non-sense, someone is going to get crossed who will make it a national issue. We have people coming home from the big sand box on a daily basis , most of whom are going to have issue with seeing their loved ones go through torture and possibly death so that someone can get rich. It's a roll of the dice really. Don't worry, it won't be us.
Still, it will come if we are not vigilant. This nation has been woken by it's wounded before, it would be nice to think we don't have to do that again.
Peace,
David
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