
A Gas Heist Gone Wrong - newscasta
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-06-26/a-gas-heist-gone-wrong-an-explosion-and-137-deaths-in-mexico
======
hirundo
This is primarily about the poverty of the victims. Most of the adults must
have known about the extreme danger of being close to gasoline fumes. If we
can't blame their innocence, what's left besides an overwhelming need for the
gas or the profit from it?

Maybe the answer is herd following behavior. A few oblivious people go into
the danger zone, and the less oblivious think maybe they know a reason why it
isn't dangerous and I shouldn't miss out. It's a human variation of the myth
of lemmings jumping off cliffs, but less mythical.

~~~
crooked-v
"The profit from it" is underselling the effects of extreme poverty.

> Many of the survivors say they’re among the 43% of Mexicans living below the
> poverty line—about $1,940 a year in the city, $1,260 in the country—and
> can’t afford to ignore free money.

------
miguelmota
A great podcast episode on this is Planet Money's 'Mexico Fights The Fuel
Pirates'; they explain how it all led up to this

[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/08/701613540/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/08/701613540/episode-899-mexico-
fights-the-fuel-pirates)

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
Wow... that was a lot better than your average Planet Money segment.

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gwbas1c
Reminds me of the Zoolander gasoline fight:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTrxEQnPtAg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTrxEQnPtAg)

~~~
Johnny555
That's exactly what I was thinking when I read:

 _“People were fighting, others laughing, and most were drunk on the fumes.
They were throwing gas at each other.”_

It's amazing (and tragic) that people would do this in real life.

~~~
gwbas1c
I can think of examples of "mass" misbehavior when I was younger:

\- Camp councilors eating the freeze pops in the lunch freezer that were for
the kids

\- High schoolers eating all the candy in the vending machine when someone
broke the glass

\- A very large group of us went to a local restaurant. The next day we heard
of a lot of people leaving without paying. (I left a lot of money before
leaving, and told everyone I sat with to do the same too. Now that I'm older
I'd at least track down our server and hand them money personally.)

In all cases, there's this weird thing that seemed to turn off in other
peoples' heads. It's like all reason just goes away.

------
gwbas1c
Version of story without a paywall:
[https://1stamendmentnews.org/2019/06/26/a-gas-heist-gone-
wro...](https://1stamendmentnews.org/2019/06/26/a-gas-heist-gone-wrong-an-
explosion-and-137-deaths-in-mexico/)

~~~
knd775
You mean a stolen repost of the article?

------
always4getpass
Greed breeds corruption, corruption breeds poverty, poverty breeds lack of
education, lack of education breeds stupidity.

It is the same if you replace the lack of education with despair..

------
aaron695
LiveLeak has the footage of it exploding and before and after.

It's worth watching if your up to it but the footage of people escaping on
fire is hard to handle.

But like all such things it is both informative and might help you handle
similar situations such as a small gas fire.

[https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=sLpTO_1547875958](https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=sLpTO_1547875958)

------
lifeeeeee
There was an article recently about how the drug cartels in Mexico pivoted
into stealing gas. Much easier and less risky than drug trafficking.

This is why ending the war on drugs in US will not improve the Mexico violence
problem much.

~~~
mschuster91
the war on drugs should have been aborted years ago. If that had been done,
there would not be any gangs blowing up pipelines today.

~~~
threezero
We haven’t fought any drug wars in Venezuela, and they have routine gas theft,
including tanker truck hijackings. It sounds more like economic causes than
“the US did it!”

~~~
ch
And we certainly have never interfered in any economic sense in Venezuela ...
hold on, my producer is telling me that this is incorrect.

~~~
antidesitter
Elaborate?

------
BlueTemplar
Did a kid get shot for seeing too much ?

------
mcguire
This is what happens when you take a story, in this case gangs and cartels
stealing gasoline from pipelines, and add a human interest element that has
_nothing_ to do with the story. In this case, that is a group of locals taking
gas spewing from a broken pipeline and being killed or injured by the
explosion.

~~~
TotempaaltJ
I'm pretty sure the story here is how 137 people died in a gas explosion in
Mexico (plus probably hundreds injured for life), including some backstory as
to why that explosion happened.

> The Mendoza sisters, however, say seeking out a guilty party is a low
> priority for them, at least for now. They’re trying to survive the
> consequences of the fire and get used to the idea of being alone in Hidalgo.

~~~
jjeaff
Fortunately, that is the story. But the headline makes it sound like the
accident in particular was due to a heist. This implying an organized effort
to steal gas. But as the precious poster mentioned, this was a broken line
that locals just started showing up to in order to take advantage of the free
money.

~~~
Causality1
It wasn't a broken line, it was a botched tap job. I don't see a lot of moral
difference between an organized heist and an impromptu opportunistic criminal
mob, except that the former has the decency to not get children involved.

~~~
mcguire
" _The scene in the green alfalfa field abutting the pipeline appeared to be a
free-for-all, roughly 80 villagers swarming a leak inside a 100-foot-long,
5-foot-deep irrigation trench that bisected the field. There seemed to be no
organization, no tap, no hose—only two holes in the pipe, which made the fuel
spurt as if from a wonky fountain. It seemed possible a local huachicol gang
had screwed up the extraction, but the holes had none of the typical
hallmarks._ "

There's no description or picture of the pipe, other than that and the photo
captioned, "Survivors have erected a memorial at the site of the fire."
Similar pipes get punctured by farm equipment fairly routinely; there's no
reason to believe this was a criminal tap rather than an accident that the
local people tried to take advantage of.

What I suspect Bloomberg wants is an article about the evils of gasoline
thieves and they're sticking the human interest story to that to get
attention.

~~~
Causality1
The article seemed very sympathetic to the people killed and injured to me,
giving multiple accounts from their perspective and that of their families,
etc. But this is the equivalent, at best, of a crowd descending on a crashed
Brinks truck to snatch up spilled cash and then having the armored car's fuel
tank explode on them. They subjected themselves to extraordinary danger to
take what didn't belong to them and paid the price for it. I'd consider the
moral ledger to be balanced.

~~~
GhostVII
Except the gas that was spilling out of the pipe was never going to be
recovered and used for anything else - nothing of value was being stolen. For
people in extreme poverty, the money they gain from gas could significantly
affect their lives, I don't blame them for trying to take it.

~~~
Causality1
Oh I don't blame them for trying either. I do blame them for bringing children
and getting them killed.

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gnusty_gnurc
Worth remembering Mexico nationalized gas, leading to gas shortages, rationing
- and higher prices.

~~~
forthwall
That seems like a un-nuanced generalization of Mexico and it's politics. Saudi
Arabia has nationalized gas and has no shortage and low prices.

~~~
privateSFacct
Saudi Arabia's subsidy of gas prices likely results in either unsustainable
economic performance without oil revenue and/or a total lack of value for fuel
efficiency = environment impact.

They are having some actual success reforming in this area -
[http://www.arabnews.com/node/1353116](http://www.arabnews.com/node/1353116)

