Explosion in Fort Worth

[rahbert]

Explosion reported in Fort Worth location unknown. Flames 1000 feet high according to WBAP.

[TampaDude]

FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!!!

[dmz]

I don’t know - I heard you can put out matches by putting them in gasoline - it was on the Internet so you knows its true...
____________

LOL. I would avoid trying to replicate this experiment in an enclosed space.

[msnimje]

I was a paid firefighter for ten years, I just do not recall this many events in Texas before.

Global Warming, DUH!! :~)

[servantboy777]

Wow! Nice, my day wouldn’t be complete without a smart A$$

[theDentist]

I thought that maybe Sheryl “Save the Toilet Paper” Crow blew her top.

[finallyatexan]

I like to go down there just to walk around - it’s a fun place

[finallyatexan]

I live right on the edge of the airport and this is about 20 minutes away.

[dfwgator]

Or it was a disgruntled Mavericks fan after last night’s game.

[tiredoflaundry]

Thanks, the old man got to Ft Worth with no problems. :o)

[Old Sarge]

That was COOL!

[BagCamAddict]

That building is in the 14-story range, which puts the building at a max of 175 feet. Based on the perspective lines shown in the second photo, the flames aren’t much higher than the building... certainly not more than 25% higher than the building. That puts the flames at a max of about 200 feet high.

[BagCamAddict]

Classic use of the word “and” to make something seem worse than it is. The narrator says “flames and smoke reached nearly 800 feet in the air.” That could mean flames were 100 feet in the air and smoke was another 700 feet above that. No way to tell how high those flames were, as there was nothing in the footage for scale.

[jwparkerjr]

You see the number 10,000 frequently in the Bible. I heard it explained once that when you see that number it doesn’t really mean ten thousand, but rather the biggest number you can imagine. They had a much more limited grasp of large numbers in those days and the 10,000 was meant to mean too numerous to count. I think the ‘flames 1,000 feet high” is used the same way. They don’t know exactly how high the flames are but they are certainly the highest they’ve ever seen so they must be a ‘thousand feet’.

I am not being critical of them, they really have no way of knowing the height, but I find it neat that that’s so often the number they use.

A thousand feet is a lot more than most people realize, especially when it’s a thousand feet up! Very few cities have buildings that tall, most TV towers aren’t much more than that.

[BagCamAddict]

I’m sure you’re right. Like you said, 1000 feet is ALOT more than people realize. I just wish the media would be required to take some classes in the difference between specifics, generalities, estimates, ballpark figures, round numbers, accuracy, order of magnitude, etc.

Words have meaning. Numbers have meaning. They should understand those basic things if they are in the communication business. At the least, they could say “I have no idea how high those flames are, but it looks like it’s over 1000 feet to me!” At least that gives the listener the sense that (a) it’s not an accurate number, and (b) “it sure is high!”

[jwparkerjr]

Actually they do have training in that sort of thing, and they are dictated to by the style book that the editors are responsible for seeing to it are followed. Wire copy seems to be the bottom of the barrel anymore. I’m not sure anyone even edits the wire stories as they go out. I know for a newspaper there are several levels of editing to make certain everything is kosher from a style standpoint. There’s a lot more attention paid the the details than most readers realize. Most papers even have a weekly or monthly newsroom publication that talks about errors that were allowed to slip through, or better still stories of close calls where a heads-up page designer or copy editor caught an error before it went to press.

[supercat]

I’m sure you’re right. Like you said, 1000 feet is ALOT more than people realize. I just wish the media would be required to take some classes in the difference between specifics, generalities, estimates, ballpark figures, round numbers, accuracy, order of magnitude, etc.

"Zillion" may be quantitatively meaningless, but would seem applicable in some situations like this when something is so big its size is not known even within an order of magnitude.

[stockpirate]

Dang, you must be right, Global warming, that splains it all.

[rustbucket]

Classic use of the word “and” to make something seem worse than it is. The narrator says “flames and smoke reached nearly 800 feet in the air.” That could mean flames were 100 feet in the air and smoke was another 700 feet above that. No way to tell how high those flames were, as there was nothing in the footage for scale.

Being a gas fire, there was essentially no visible smoke, just flame. I've seen various figures reported for the height of the Devil's Cigarette Lighter flames: 450 feet, 700 feet, 800 feet.

Red Adair, who put the fire out, reported flames of 700 feet in his film of the blowout. Red Adair's Film of Devil's Cigarette Lighter, Part 1 of 4.

In the film, the flames look quite high in pictures taken one mile or more from the well. However high it was, it was one monster blowout that reportedly melted sand a half mile from the well.

[BagCamAddict]

Thanks. Understood.

Just trying to point out that the use of the word “and” makes it impossible to tell what A or B really is. Like the pet food recall deaths... when reporters say 10,000 pets have been killed or made sick, it’s impossible to know whether the means 1 dead and 9,999 sick or the other way around.

When the oil well fires were burning in Iraq & Kuwait, I had a friend who was griping about “the Bush administration” awarding no-bid contracts to put out those fires. I had to tell him there are only about 4 companies in the WORLD who have the expertise and equipment and manpower to do that work.

[Strategerist]

It amazes me that there are people who want to believe in conspiracies rather than exercise their brains.

Also people are just flat out frustrated at the absence of terrorist attacks within the US in the last few years - don't get to nuke Mecca unless we get a lot of them.