Picked this up from Reuters news Wire.

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Two killed in Tennessee gas tank explosion

LIVINGSTON, Tenn., June 30 (Reuters) - Two men were killed and a third was seriously hurt on Wednesday when the two crude oil and natural gas storage tanks they were working on exploded.

"They were doing some type of repair work" on the tanks, which supplied a residential neighborhood, when they exploded around 7:30 a.m. EDT (1130 GMT), said Sgt. Tim Poore of the Overton County Sheriff's Department.

The injured man was airlifted to a hospital in Chattanooga. The victims' names were withheld pending notification of the families, Poore said.

The tanks were located in a field about 500 yards (metres) away from the nearest home. No homes were damaged, Poore said.

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-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), June 30, 1999

Answers

If On Topic was the Sun this piece would be Pluto, WAY Off Topic. The point of this story was what Ray? Gas is dangerous...

-- (gas@is.flamable BTW), June 30, 1999.

Torch make gas go boom. Jumpin' jack flash it's a gas.

.

-- corrine l (corrine@iwaynet.net), June 30, 1999.

gas:

You may be right. This may be totally unrelated to Y2K.

However, if you've been around here for a while, you know that there has been speculation among the participants that the number of such explosions are becoming more frequent. The precise statistics seem to be hard to pin down due mostly to lack of up-to-second data. The rate of such accidents may, in fact, be normal. It has been suggested by some that this is simply a form of the "red truck syndrome" (i.e when you own a red truck, you suddenly begin to notice many other red trucks).

For what it's worth, I've seen no hard evidence that clearly demonstrates that these types of events are becomming more frequent.

This topic may turn out to be a red herring (truck?) but several here are following it and thus, more on topic than it would seem at first glance.

-- Arnie Rimmer (Arnie_Rimmer@usa.net), June 30, 1999.

boy are you folks boneheads....

The point of this post was NOT that this was a "Y2K Event", nor was it caused by computer error.

I'm pretty sure Ray posted it because there are LOTS of other posts on such subjects as:

"HOW DO I STORE GASOLINE?"

"HOW DO I INSTALL A PROPANE TANK IN MY BACKYARD?"

"HOW DO I STORE (any other type of fuel) AS BACKUP?"

If you plan on storing a fuel, or several types of fuel, DO YOUR HOMEWORK!!!!! or get somebody who knows what they are doing to do the work.

these guys apparently thought they knew what they were doing.

Its these kinds of boneheads that makes me worried about my neighbors.

-- Plonk! (realaddress@hotmail.com), June 30, 1999.

Plonk: LOL!

Oh ^$%(@! Seems I've forgotten to include crude oil in my storage plans!

I can probably still buy the oil but I'll bet Leahmans is totally out of the home-based refineries. Maybe Northern still has a few of the hand-operated models...

-- Arnie Rimmer (Arnie_Rimmer@usa.net), June 30, 1999.

LIVINGSTON, Tenn., June 30 (Reuters) - Two men were killed and a third was seriously hurt on Wednesday when the two crude oil and natural gas storage tanks they were working on exploded.

"They were doing some type of repair work" on the tanks, which supplied a residential neighborhood, when they exploded around 7:30 a.m. EDT (1130 GMT), said Sgt. Tim Poore of the Overton County Sheriff's Department.

"two crude oil tanks" + "which supplied a residential neighborhood" Ya, for the ever popular crude oil home heating system...

-- Greenthumb G.I. (greenthumb@i.g.i.), July 01, 1999.