Another extremely sad and totally avoidable tragedy, this time in Pakistan :(

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fromelsewhere

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Another horrifying tragedy involving fire that was also preventable. This time it happened in Pakistan a day before Eid Al Fitr. People from a relatively poor village rushed to collect fuel leaking from a crashed oil tanker. Somebody tried lighting a cigarette, not putting 1+1 together. What happened? Boom, and at least 153 dead :( Just plain horrible.
https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/06/pakistan-oil-tanker-explosion/531546/
 
When I visited local online newspaper site I read the news title "Tanker truck overturned and blast on Pakistan road. Kill at least ....." immediately I wonder, how could this traffic accident kill so many people?. But after I read the news article I began to understand.

This is actually a common phenomenon in the third world countries. A truck overturned on road, and local people rush to loot the truck cargo for themselves. Looting is wrong, of course. But they don't care. They see it as "lucky gift".

Is it because poverty?. Actually it's about mentality, although poverty has contribution in building this mentality.

Those victims must be knew that fuel is flammable. But euphoria because they thought they could get something for free made them neglect the danger although police had warned them.

There is a lesson that we can take from this tragedy.
 
ardianto said:
When I visited local online newspaper site I read the news title "Tanker truck overturned and blast on Pakistan road. Kill at least ....." immediately I wonder, how could this traffic accident kill so many people?. But after I read the news article I began to understand.

This is actually a common phenomenon in the third world countries. A truck overturned on road, and local people rush to loot the truck cargo for themselves. Looting is wrong, of course. But they don't care. They see it as "lucky gift".

Is it because poverty?. Actually it's about mentality, although poverty has contribution in building this mentality.

Those victims must be knew that fuel is flammable. But euphoria because they thought they could get something for free made them neglect the danger although police had warned them.

There is a lesson that we can take from this tragedy.
Click to expand...

I get what you mean. That being said, I'm afraid that I may have been one of the locals to collect the fuel, reasoning that "the fuel is going to get wasted anyways. Who is going to get hurt if I help myself to some?" It is a faulty reasoning, but when there's an announcement on the loudspeakers and everyone is running to get some of the "gift", it's easy to get carried away.

What I find truly despicable, however, is this kind of incident (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/peru-crash-attracts-looters/), where there was a plane crash and people looted the site. People eagerly ran to the crash site to steal from the dead, and they seriously compromised the investigation in the process.

That being said, there is indeed a lesson to be learned from this incident because it could have been prevented
 
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The cases which people take stuffs from truck that get accident often happen in Indonesia too. But actually it can be prevented if police can be firm in prohibit those people.

Like in the video below. A truck that carried drinks got accident in Batang district, Indonesia. But head of Batang police resort firmly prohibit people to take those stuffs. Here, what he said "You are shameful !! ... That's not yours !! "

 
^ Too bad such police officers who take their job seriously weren't present in Pakistan.
 
:salam:

It is sad and disgusting to loot / steal from anyone. But even more apprehensible to do so from dead bodies. That is just another level of disgust.

And Allah :swt: knows best.
 
Unfortunately this seems to happen everywhere, also when robbers aren´t such poor but when there is some chaos like power cut or demonstration and people run to the shops to take what ever they can.

As we say in my language: "an opportunity makes a thief".
 
loudspeaker atop a nearby mosque alerted the village to the leaking fuel


...adds insult to injury really.

Alhamdulillah.

..
..
Just trying to find some money to achieve some peace of mind.. and security.

Irony.
 

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