Twenty eight years on - Thailand remembers unforgettable gas tanker explosion

[DrTuner]

Probably won't happen again. Getting to over 5km/h in middle of BKK only happens during songkran.

[UdeBoCM]

7 hours ago, bluesofa said:

Wasn't there another explosion a few months later, near one of the docks. I don't remember if that was a gas tanker or not? That was around mid-morning and the apartment I was in near Klong Toei shook, everyone thought it was an earthquake at first.

Chemical explosion, a few months later resulting in 60 deaths http://articles.latimes.com/1991-04-02/news/wr-1884_1_chemical-waste

[UdeBoCM]

So many more natural and man-made disasters to remember here, nearly every month https://www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_disasters_in_Thailand

[NanLaew]

5 hours ago, Sydebolle said:

... Also wondering, if the truck owner was ever held responsible for his „non-road-worthiness“ .....

After 28 years you still wonder about this? Seriously?

 

Right now, I'm wondering what's for dinner.

Edited September 24, 2018 by NanLaew

[bluesofa]

9 minutes ago, UdeBoCM said:

Chemical explosion, a few months later resulting in 60 deaths http://articles.latimes.com/1991-04-02/news/wr-1884_1_chemical-waste

Thanks for posting the link. At the time I never saw the news article about it, it was pre-internet time.

 

I remember a girl who had a room in our apartment thought her sister might have been a victim. There were three of us in a tuk-tuk going into the area where the explosion had happened looking for the girl.

Everyone else were evacuating, carrying any possessions they could. I remember seeing two people lugging a big TV between them.

We managed to find the sister, she was OK fortunately.

 

[NanLaew]

2 hours ago, The manic said:

But there has been no similar accident since.  Actually I had just started work in Bangkok when this happened

 

2 hours ago, The manic said:

I had just started work on Bangkok that month.

 

1 hour ago, The manic said:

I was working in Bangkok. My first week of work.

OK, we get it already. You had just started work in Bangkok.

[plachon]

This explosion happened just over a month after I arrived in Thailand and I remember the reporting of it well and the shocking images of the inferno, though I can't remember exactly where I was at the time. Not in Bangkok, but upcountry, and sub-consciously I suspect it is one of the reasons why I never like to spend more than a few days in the Big Mango sweatbucket city.

 

However, I soon got used to reading about a string of such accidents where human error was the main cause and lessons were never quite learned. The Kader toy factory fire, the collapse of the hotel in Korat, the other tanker explosion in Phang-Nga are just a few examples that spring to mind. But it is the constant attrition of human life by a dreadful road safety culture that is still the biggest albatross around Thailand's neck, killing and injuring so many people who could make so much positive difference to the country, if the laws were properly enforced and the culture of "mai pen rai", "my vehicle is bigger than yours" and "jai ron" driving styles could be altered.????

[oldlakey]

5 minutes ago, NanLaew said:

 

 

OK, we get it already. You had just started work in Bangkok.

Its his street cred don't you know, that's a while ago

[Dibbler]

4 hours ago, bfc1980 said:

I remember being told about this during my Thai culture course a few years ago. It was said that Thai culture believes that the cause of the accident was because of bad spirits, karma etc in the vicinity.

 

I sat there open mouthed, not able to believe the garbage that I was being told. I had only been in the country for a few days and was already beginning to see how backward some people can be.

In Buddhism when sh!t happens it isnt sh!t

Edited September 24, 2018 by Dibbler

[oldlakey]

6 minutes ago, plachon said:

This explosion happened just over a month after I arrived in Thailand and I remember the reporting of it well and the shocking images of the inferno, though I can't remember exactly where I was at the time. Not in Bangkok, but upcountry, and sub-consciously I suspect it is one of the reasons why I never like to spend more than a few days in the Big Mango sweatbucket city.

 

However, I soon got used to reading about a string of such accidents where human error was the main cause and lessons were never quite learned. The Kader toy factory fire, the collapse of the hotel in Korat, the other tanker explosion in Phang-Nga are just a few examples that spring to mind. But it is the constant attrition of human life by a dreadful road safety culture that is still the biggest albatross around Thailand's neck, killing and injuring so many people who could make so much positive difference to the country, if the laws were properly enforced and the culture of "mai pen rai", "my vehicle is bigger than yours" and "jai ron" driving styles could be altered.????

It's know as "Common Usage" it's what happens when enforcement is next to non existent

It has it's rules and can be "SAFE" when people adhere to them as is shown by the "MANY' who ride against the flow on a regular basis, until you get the odd loose cannon when things go drastically wrong

The trouble though with "Common Usage" as the norm rather than enforcement is when you come to, Unfit Drivers, DUI, Overloading, No Seat Belts, Mobile Phones, lack of Vehicle Maintenance, Unfit for Purpose Vehicles as in Converted Vehicles, Drivers under Pressure to meet Timetables ETC, ETC, ETC

Hence the attrition is here to stay along with all the other deaths caused by a lack of Nanny State Health and Safety

[SammyT]

1 hour ago, NanLaew said:

 

 

OK, we get it already. You had just started work in Bangkok.

Any idea where Themanic was working at the time of the explosion?

[oldlakey]

18 minutes ago, SammyT said:

Any idea where Themanic was working at the time of the explosion?

No idea but I know he had only just started

[pmh2009]

Yeah I remember that!!! was 29 then..... and Thailand at that time really was just a developing country!!!  There is another horrific incident like this were the government or any other organization were not at all prepared... the fire at the hotel in 1997; name which I forgot, where now the intercontinental is---- that hotel was one of the highest hotels at that time and a fire started around the mid upper floors, so you can imagine no fire trucks' ladders could reach the trapped people and no helicopter could come to save as itself would have be burnt. So you probably can guess people were jumping out of the floors to escape  death by burning!!!!

And of course there was the other incident..... 

[Kieran00001]

21 hours ago, worgeordie said:

The gas tank was tied on with rope to the back of a truck,

and in 28 years the have not learnt much,at the time they

where going to ban the delivery of gas bottles by motorbike,

so i guess nothing happened there.

 

regards worgeordie

 

The delivery of 27kg of gas by bike is a whole different issue to transporting two 20,000 liter LPG tanks strapped to the back of a truck, and you may have noticed that these days large tanks of gas are always purpose built trunks and never home made.

[SammyT]

9 hours ago, Kieran00001 said:

 

The delivery of 27kg of gas by bike is a whole different issue to transporting two 20,000 liter LPG tanks strapped to the back of a truck, and you may have noticed that these days large tanks of gas are always purpose built trunks and never home made.

Ever seen the aftermath of a gas bottle explosion? I can assure you it is destructive and deadly. Sure it's slightly apples with oranges, but it's still in the same vein of careless transportation of dangerous goods.

[ndfdjnd]

Nice thread.  Thaivisa should produce more stuff like this.

[Damrongsak]

Interesting account & some pics:  http://www.thebigchilli.com/feature-stories/horror-lives-on-after-deadliest-traffic-accident-in-thai-history

 

 

[Kieran00001]

1 hour ago, SammyT said:

Ever seen the aftermath of a gas bottle explosion? I can assure you it is destructive and deadly. Sure it's slightly apples with oranges, but it's still in the same vein of careless transportation of dangerous goods.

 

I knew someone who lived in a little yacht in a harbour, his gas regulator developed a fault resulting in his boat smashing the windows of the shops lining the harbour, it was certainly deadly him.  I also knew a fisherman who lived on a beach where you had to park high up on the cliffs above and walk down a steep path for about 1 km, so instead of carrying his gas bottles down the path he would just throw them off the side where they would bounce all the way down to the beach, he never had one break. 

[UdeBoCM]

2 hours ago, SammyT said:

Ever seen the aftermath of a gas bottle explosion? I can assure you it is destructive and deadly. Sure it's slightly apples with oranges, but it's still in the same vein of careless transportation of dangerous goods.

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