MIDDLETOWN - Witnesses and emergency response authorities said as many as 100 people were injured and an undetermined number may have died when a massive explosion, which homeowners felt more than 10 miles away and mistook for an earth quake, blew up a power plant being built on the Connecticut River in the southern section of Middletown at about 11 a.m. Sunday. Medical rescue personnel said at least 100 were injured, four critically, and two were dead. "There are bodies everywhere," a witness said. Another witness said many victims may be buried in rubble An hour after the explosion and what is believed to be the Kleen Energy Systems plant on River Road, emergency rescue personnel were continuing to arrive by vehicle and helicopter. Helicopters were airlifting victims to area hospitals. There were as many as 20 ambulances at the plant. Neighbors of the plant said as many as 100 employees may have been working there when the explosion took place. Confirmed information about damage and injuries from authorities was difficult to obtain.
Gerald E. Daley, a member of the Middletown Common Council, said the gas-fired plant was under construction and that today was the first day that its power-generating systems were being tested. Workers were on scene when the blast occurred, he said.
Back at the turn of the last decade, there were a huge number of natural gas fired peaking plants built in Indiana. They shipped the power out of state, but these things tended to create environmental messes which pissed off the locals. So they fought for a state law that would force the electric companies to get a permit from the state through a regulatory process that required the use of trained personnel only on the construction of the plants. The electric and construction companies fought it tooth and nail, and said that it there was no danger of there being an explosion if there was a problem with the construction. They said that painting pictures of these gas peaking plants blowing up was a scare tactic by organized labor to get their members work........ And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
It would make a brilliant political ad campaign... En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
Those damn overpaid operating engineers can obviously be replaced by $24k per year temps.
I took my blog name from the series of sociological studies in my home town.
The Middletown studies are a classic sociological case study of a city, Muncie, in Indiana, as contained in two books by Robert Staughton Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd: * Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture, published in 1929. * Middletown in Transition : A Study in Cultural Conflicts, published in 1937. They wrote this about the first book: "The city will be called Middletown. A community as small as thirty-odd thousand...[in which] the field staff was enabled to concentrate on cultural change...the interplay of a relatively constant...American stock and its changing environment" (1929: p. 8). In these studies, the Lynds and a group of researchers conduct an in-depth field study of a small American urban center in order to discover key cultural norms and better understand social change. The first study was conducted during the 1920s, beginning in January, 1924, while the second was written during the Great Depression.
* Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture, published in 1929. * Middletown in Transition : A Study in Cultural Conflicts, published in 1937.
They wrote this about the first book:
"The city will be called Middletown. A community as small as thirty-odd thousand...[in which] the field staff was enabled to concentrate on cultural change...the interplay of a relatively constant...American stock and its changing environment" (1929: p. 8).
In these studies, the Lynds and a group of researchers conduct an in-depth field study of a small American urban center in order to discover key cultural norms and better understand social change. The first study was conducted during the 1920s, beginning in January, 1924, while the second was written during the Great Depression.
