A Texan in New York City - Explosions and Bomb Scares

Howdy, Everybody;

Funny how things just happen in New York City. First, on Tuesday 7/17/07 somebody leaves a container of used clothes at the Library, and it clears the library and several surrounding city blocks while the police bomb squad checks it out. Then, on Wednesday, 7/18/07, a steam line blows, taking a big chunk of road with it, killing or injuring several people, in an intersection two blocks over and one block down from the entrance to Grand Central Terminal. We walked those same streets last week.

I'm glad we missed both incidents. Our son saw the cloud, but he was far enough away that he didn't attach any significance to it until he saw the news. This is a Good Thing.

Where we live, one time a pickup truck caught on fire across the road at a (now defunct) gas station. Since several other people were coping with the fire and our help wasn't necessary, we got out the lawn chairs and watched the show. Well, not really- we didn't Actually get out the lawn chairs. But we thought about it. This was high excitement around here.

There was in fact a gas line blowout over near my niece's house a few years ago - major big flames going high in the air. So far as I can remember, nobody got hurt. And, also years ago, Texas Eastman suffered several explosions over several years. People died in some of those incidents. Rattled the glass at my house, some 16 miles away. So I guess there's always some risk of the infrastructure going wrong.

Sometimes, boredom is a good thing.

-Pop