Because it’s that time of season, here’s a yule log. GIF by me, fire by my fiancée. — Ernie @ SFB
(Taken with Cinemagram)
A fire inside a multi-story garment factory outside Dhaka, Bangladesh killed at least 111 people. Most of the workers inside the building died on the first and second floors, where there were not enough exits — and those that did exist did not open to the outside. Bangladesh is the second largest clothes exporter after China, and has a notorious safety record; more than 500 workers have died in factory fires there since 2006. (Photo: Abir Abdullah / EPA via The New York Times)
The factory stricken by this deadly fire was producing clothing for Tazreen Fashion Ltd., which was sold, among other places, at Switzerland’s discount C&A chain.
Fire tornado. Australia, land of killer death things.
Combining two of our greatest nature-related fears into one super-fear.
Breaking: Huge fire at Chevron oil refinery in Richmond, California. Residents told to close windows and stay indoors. This same refinery caught fire about 10 years ago.
Keeping an eye on this. @ProducerMatthew has been tweeting about this heavily in the past half-hor.
32,000 flee Colorado Springs as wildfires worsen. Gov. John Hickenlooper said “It was like looking at the worst movie set you could imagine.”
Photo via @scottseibold
Damn, That looks like a volcanic eruption, not a wildfire.
Why is it that beauty and destruction go so uncomfortably hand-in-hand at times? This looks like an epic Photoshop job, not something affecting thousands of people’s lives. By the way, this blaze doubled in size overnight, to over 24 square miles.
» Two separate incidents in Tibet on Monday: The self-immolation incidents quickly raised tensions near the Buddhist temple in Lhasa, leading many to believe that the tide is turning against Chinese rule in the region. ”For the Chinese authorities, it has very serious implications and suggests that the movement is spreading among Tibetans,” said Robbie Barnett, an expert on Tibet at Columbia University. ”It could lead to an increased severity of restrictions and controls.” One note: Most of the self-immolation incidents listed above didn’t take place in Tibet, but in Tibetan-populated areas in southwestern China.
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New revelations on Honduran prison fire: As we mentioned yesterday, the most lethal prison fire in the last century took place Tuesday in Honduras, at a prison in Comayagua. Since then some startling and grisly facts have come out, which speak to the sad state of legal affairs in Honduras, as well as to the staggering overcrowding and understaffing of their facilities – of the 800 or so inmates at Comayagua, 57% were being held without charge or were awaiting trial, most on suspicion of gang membership. During the fire, only six guards were on duty, just one of whom held the keys for every prison cell. source
» Crowded chaos: The fire started yesterday night at the prison in Comayagua, with authorities believing, by another prisoner’s report, that an inmate started the blaze by igniting their mattress. Honduras is a state plagued by high rates of crime (the United Nations says it has the world’s highest murder rate), which has caused its prisons to be absurdly overstuffed, and many are old and dilapidated. Angry relatives of the inmates gathered outside the prison this morning, protesting and at times trying to force their way in; police responded by firing tear gas. President Porfirio Lobo pledged to “take urgent measures to deal with this tragedy, which has plunged all Hondurans into mourning.”
Well, that lived up to @Reuters’ pitch: “Check out Reuters.com right now for a stunning set of images of a man in Greece who lit himself on fire after denied a loan renegotiation.” Holy cow. Click for more, obviously. Note graphic content. (Nodas Stylianidis/Reuters)
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Photos of the Macroplastics manufacturing plant fire in Fairfield, California. The six-alarm fire sent a plume of smoke into the air that could be seen as far north as Sacramento and as far south as Concord, both 40 miles away. More high-res photos on Google+ and more videos on @ProducerMatthew on Twitter. [ProducerMatthew.com photos]
Worth a look, guys. This was a huge fire, but fortunately it’s contained. It happened in Matt’s vicinity.
![producermatthew:
Now live: Streaming video from WFXT’s helicopter over the eight-alarm Woonsocket, Rhode Island fire. [Watch live]
Holy crap. It looks like the structure’s about to turn into rubble in this. Reports note that one firefighter has been injured and a few nearby buildings were abandoned, but the mill was vacant.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmg7mxqRc61qz5ew6o1_500.png)
Now live: Streaming video from WFXT’s helicopter over the eight-alarm Woonsocket, Rhode Island fire. [Watch live]
Holy crap. It looks like the structure’s about to turn into rubble in this. Reports note that one firefighter has been injured and a few nearby buildings were abandoned, but the mill was vacant.
It looks really funny until you realize the context: Rio de Janeiro’s carnival-building section of town, Samba City, just had a huge fire where lots of stuff got destroyed. Costumes, giant props: They were almost all destroyed. (Nobody was hurt, though.) “We are heartbroken,” said League of Samba Schools president Jorge Castanheria. “Everything was practically ready for the carnival.” It happened so close to the event, which draws hundreds of thousands of people each year, that they may not be able to get everything ready in time. source
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