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To: Anchoragite
1) Cruel comment. They were teenagers. Teenagers are ignorant and notorious for believing that they are impervious to harm. 2) There is a HUGE difference between ignorance and stupidity.

Bravo.

If anyone wants to point fingers, how about all of the adults who build dangerous facilities and then don't secure them. If a teenager can wander into a facility like that and set off an explosion by accident, someone with malice could easily do the same on purpose.

There are tens of thousands of these tanks all over East Texas. There is no possibility of kids simply being ignorant. They would have had to be willfully ignorant, that is, STUPID.

Tanks are ordinarily surrounded by an earthen berm to contain the oil in the event of a rupture and by a barbed wire or chain link fence. Teens in East Texas certainly know it is lethal to cross any fence, ever.

So9

49 posted on 04/13/2003 10:15:42 AM PDT by Servant of the Nine (We are the Hegemon. We can do anything we damned well please.)
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To: Servant of the Nine
Funny, I went to school in East Texas, don't remember a single PR campaign that said "Don't cross fences."

Average teens think that all warnings are akin to "Don't run with a sharp stick." They are the definition of "Sophomoric" -- just smart enough to start figuring things out, but just foolish enough not to know what it is they're figuring. It's why we call them "Sophomores," for cryin-out-loud.

They should not be expected to know everything, and we as a community should do more than laugh at their parents and call them "stupid." -- especially considering that the folks who work in those facilities are probably required to have a whole slough of safety training/procedures on the exact dangers that facility poses before they're allowed to set foot on the equipment.

64 posted on 04/13/2003 10:53:16 AM PDT by Anchoragite
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