Mexican Oil Facility Explosion

April 25, 2016

This is bad.

An explosion at an oil facility in Veracruz on April 20 killed 32 people and injured over 130.

CNN reported that the explosion “sent large plumes of dark smoke and toxic fumes across the region,” forcing surrounding areas to be evacuated. The company said in a statement that air quality “continues to be monitored in order to determine the existence of toxic substances that could endanger health, which continue to be ruled out.”

This is not the first explosion. In September 2012, an explosion occurred at a Pemex gas plant in Tamaulipas, a Mexican state in the north. The explosion killed 33 people. A year later, in January 2013, methane gas and solvent vapors set off an explosion at the company’s headquarters in Mexico City and killed 37 people. One of Pemex’s oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico caught fire in 2015, and a fire at a Veracruz plant in February killed a worker.

Yet, big corporations are still trying to justify pipelines like KeyStoneXL, and seem to think that any alleged dangers are minuscule, or can be overcome. I'm sure the survivors of all of those who died feel so much better. I hope, at the least, the surviving family members get a huge pension. I know in a world with somewhere between 7 - 9 billion, these numbers are small, but every life should be counted sacred, and as such, each loss is tragic.