I am a danger to myself (but not so much others)

After coming home today, the first thing I did was put away yesterday's laundry, along with the cart, and put the hamper back in the bathroom to be filled again. Then I rested for awhile (I didn't actually go to sleep, but I was sleepy, so I laid down). Then I got up, vacuumed the whole apartment, dusted, did the mirrors, cleaned the bathroom sink and toilet, etc. It was nice to have a clean house, so I thought I'd light some incense and a candle to make it smell nice, and I dropped the match onto the tablecloth next to the candle, causing a small hole to burn through. Sigh. I am such a klutz.

But I got it lit without burning the place down. 'The Big Bang Theory' is coming on in a few minutes, and I'm going to watch it. It's one show I don't need cable for. I'm going to finish by baked potato and cheese and then turn it on. I'll probably write later, but if not (I might do some reading), have a good night!

I checked the news before going to bed, and found sadness

Jewish family loses 7 children in fire at New York City home

Fire investigators believe a hot plate left on a kitchen counter ignited the flames that raced up the stairs, trapping the children in their second-floor rear bedrooms, Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said.

Many religious Jews do not use electricity on the Sabbath, along with refraining from work and observing other prohibitions meant to keep the day holy. As a result, some families may leave appliances on so they are usable without violating any religious laws or traditions.

Nigro called it the city's worst fatal fire in recent memory.

"It's a tragedy for this family, it's a tragedy for this community, it's a tragedy for the city," he said.

Police officials identified the victims as members of the Sassoon family. Three of the children were girls: Eliane, 16, Rivkah, 11 and Sara, 6. Four were boys: David, 12, Yeshua, 10, Moshe, 8 and Yaakob, 5.

The mother and one daughter survived, but are critically injured. The father was away at a conference. The only smoke detector that was found was in the basement. This is so sad. My thoughts and prayers are with the family and the close-knit Orthodox community touched by this.

A sad story, but he saved several lives

8-year-old boy rescues 6 relatives from fire, dies trying to save 7th

In his final moments, 8-year-old Tyler Doohan managed to rescue six people -- including two younger children -- from a burning mobile home in upstate New York, authorities said.

A last-ditch effort, however, to save his disabled grandfather cost the boy his life. His body was found by his grandfather, whom Tyler considered a best friend.

The trailer did not have a working smoke detector, which could have saved everyone. Please test your detector regularly.

When YKWIA first told me about

Massive Mirrors Will Bring Light To Norway Town Shrouded In Darkness, my first thought was 'Oh, no! What if the mirror intensifies the light and people spontaneously combust like ants?' Okay, I don't think like a normal person, I know. Well, then today, there's this: This London skyscraper can melt cars and set buildings on fire. Maybe I wasn't too far off, after all.

I was so sorry to read this this morning

4 Kids, 2 Adults Dead in Pa. Fire on Mother's Day

Fire Chief Todd March said it was the deadliest blaze in Pottsville, a city of about 14,000, in his 37-year career.

"It's hard to take, and there was nothing we could do," he said.

The Schuylkill County Coroner's office identified the victims as the father, Eric Brown, 30; and his children, Elijah Brown, 2; Emily Brown, 3; Jeremiah Brown, 7; and Joy Brown, 8. Another adult, Kristina Thomas, 26, also died in the fire. She's the sister of 28-year-old Kelly Brown, the mother who survived.

Kelly Brown had been doing laundry at a neighbor's house nearby at the time of the blaze because her washing machine was broken, according to the neighbor, Jennifer Purcell. Purcell said they had smelled smoke, and Purcell went outside and saw the flames, telling Brown, "Oh my God, your house is on fire!"

They both ran up the street to the house, but weren't able to get inside, Purcell said.

By the time the fire was discovered, flames were burning intensely and shooting out, preventing neighbours from getting inside, and the firefighters worked for about and hour to contain the blaze but weren't able to save the family. She's lost her children, her husband, and her sister in one fell swoop, and on Mother's Day to boot. So sad. My thoughts are with her and the rest of their family, as well as the witnesses and the firefighters who responded.

One quick thing

You may have read this today: Timbuktu mayor: Mali rebels torched library of historic manuscripts: Fleeing Islamist insurgents burnt two buildings containing priceless books as French-led troops approached, says mayor

The manuscripts were held in two separate locations: an ageing library and a new South African-funded research centre, the Ahmad Babu Institute, less than a mile away. Completed in 2009 and named after a 17th-century Timbuktu scholar, the centre used state-of-the-art techniques to study and conserve the crumbling scrolls.

Both buildings were burned down, according to the mayor, who said the information came from an informer who had just left the town. Asked whether any of the manuscripts might have survived, Cissé replied: "I don't know."

The manuscripts had survived for centuries in Timbuktu, on the remote south-west fringe of the Sahara desert. They were hidden in wooden trunks, buried in boxes under the sand and in caves. When French colonial rule ended in 1960, Timbuktu residents held preserved manuscripts in 60-80 private libraries.

The vast majority of the texts were written in Arabic. A few were in African languages, such as Songhai, Tamashek and Bambara. There was even one in Hebrew. They covered a diverse range of topics including astronomy, poetry, music, medicine and women's rights. The oldest dated from 1204.

Seydou Traoré, who has worked at the Ahmed Baba Institute since 2003, and fled shortly before the rebels arrived, said only a fraction of the manuscripts had been digitised. "They cover geography, history and religion. We had one in Turkish. We don't know what it said."

He said the manuscripts were important because they exploded the myth that "black Africa" had only an oral history. "You just need to look at the manuscripts to realise how wrong this is."

Well, maybe things aren't as bad as they appeared at first: Mali: Timbuktu Locals Saved Some of City’s Ancient Manuscripts from Islamists

In interviews with TIME on Monday, preservationists said that in a large-scale rescue operation early last year, shortly before the militants seized control of Timbuktu, thousands of manuscripts were hauled out of the Ahmed Baba Institute to a safe house elsewhere. Realizing that the documents might be prime targets for pillaging or vindictive attacks from Islamic extremists, staff left behind just a small portion of them, perhaps out of haste, but also to conceal the fact that the center had been deliberately emptied. “The documents which had been there are safe, they were not burned,” said Mahmoud Zouber, Mali’s presidential aide on Islamic affairs, a title he retains despite the overthrow of the former President, his boss, in a military coup a year ago; preserving Timbuktu’s manuscripts was a key project of his office. By phone from Bamako on Monday night, Zouber told TIME, “They were put in a very safe place. I can guarantee you. The manuscripts are in total security.”

Let's pray that the latter story is true. In the comments for the the first story, there was a disturbing comment by a sympathiser for the faction that burned the buildings, writing under the name Ayuoubah, that I found chilling: 'The idea is to sever our oppressed past, to create a stronger future by ridding ourselves of the burden of history.' That is so terribly wrong, and flies in the face of everything I believe in. Let us hope they don't succeed in destroying Mali's past. At least nearly every other comment expressed the opposite view.

I hate it when Kentucky makes the news for stupidity

Ky. woman tries to kill bedbugs, burns down apt.

Mind you, she doused her couch with alcohol and then dropped a lit cigarette on it. Because those two things, along with combustible material, go so well together that you'd just have to have a smoke while putting an accelerant on your sofa. Now 30 people have lost their homes due to that stupid action. It could have been worse--there could have been lives lost.

One, in the case of bedbugs, call a professional, or here's a thought, apartment maintenance, so they can make sure it's done professionally. Two, don't mix accelerants and fire, especially when conditions are exceedingly dry and hot. Three, don't wind up on national news doing something stupid. It's not worth the danger to yourself, others, or the fifteen minutes of infamy.

That's a little eerie, and I feel for those who want to remain

in their homes, although I wouldn't want to stay myself.

After 50 years, fire still burns underneath Pa. town

Centralia was already a coal-mining town in decline when the fire department set the town's landfill ablaze on May 27, 1962, in an ill-fated attempt to tidy up for Memorial Day. The fire wound up igniting the coal outcropping and, over the years, spread to the vast network of mines beneath homes and businesses, threatening residents with poisonous gases and dangerous sinkholes.

After a contentious battle over the future of the town, the side that wanted to evacuate won out. By the end of the 1980s, more than 1,000 people had moved and 500 structures demolished under a $42 million federal relocation program.

But some holdouts refused to go — even after their houses were seized through eminent domain in the early 1990s. They said the fire posed little danger to their part of town, accused government officials and mining companies of a plot to grab the rights to billions of dollars' worth of anthracite coal, and vowed to stay put.

I think in this case, this is a good thing

Murderer pardoned for saving hundreds in deadly Honduras prison fire

Marco Antonio Bonilla had just a few months left of his sentence to serve when the deadly fire broke out in a Honduras prison. A prison nurse who had more freedom to move through the prison than most, he got some of the keys to cells and saved perhaps hundreds of lives, and in one case used a bench to bash open a lock.

At least 360 of the 852 prisoners died in the fire. In once cell block of 105 prisoners, only four survived.

For his actions, the president of Honduras said he would give Antonio Bonilla a pardon for his conviction. While I certainly don't condone murder, this man served his debt to society and at great risk to himself saved many men who might otherwise have died horribly.

Horrific

Blaze at Prison Kills Hundreds in Honduras

The bodies of the inmates, shirtless and blackened by soot, lay on the ground in neat rows, belying the chaos from which they emerged.

Outside the fence, hundreds of relatives rushed the gates of the burned-out prison, anguished and anxious for any word, clashing with soldiers and the police when they could not get in. As a prison officer stood on a balcony, reading out a roll call of the dead and survivors from a handwritten list, faces in the crowd turned away in tears.

It was one of the worst prison fires in recent years in Latin America, with a death toll surpassing 300, most of the victims choking to death in their cells awaiting a rescue that never came. Guards with the keys were nowhere to be found, rescuers said. Some inmates bashed their way through the roof to escape, and kept running. They are now fugitives.

Granted, yes, these were criminals of all sorts. But to die trapped while smoke and fire spread throughout the area is an awful thing, a horrible death sentence. Over 300 are presumed dead of the 900 or so prisoners, with the death count likely to rise. Many of the bodies are burned beyond recognition.

How sad that this should happen over a relatively small dispute

Police Arrest Man in Burning Death of Woman

She fired him from a job moving some of her stuff after accusing him of stealing a VCR and a large cake pan. He claimed she owed him $300 and left an invoice she did not pay in November [although I've heard up to $2,000--still, not worth a woman's life, and in such a gruesome, painful demise]. And this was the result? So sad. Good that he is now in custody, though.

How horrible

Woman Is Burned Alive in an Elevator in Brooklyn

It sounds like a strange 'Law & Order' episode opening. A man dressed as an exterminator ambushed a woman in a Brooklyn apartment building elevator by spraying her in the face and on her body with accelerant, lighting a Molotov cocktail, and igniting her with it. He then left her to burn alive and escaped the building. New York police are questioning a suspect.

That anyone could do something like this to another person baffles me. I hope they catch him soon. I want to know if she was targeted for a specific reason or if this guy just wanted to kill someone and she was convenient, an older woman trapped in an elevator, holding groceries.

My heart goes out to those who knew her--family and friends--and again, I hope they catch him soon.

[This comes just a couple of days after a woman was accidentally killed in a New York elevator, when her foot got caught in the door and the elevator moved up suddenly with the doors still open, dragging her to her death, in front of elevator passengers. My thoughts are also with her friends and family, in what seems to have been a freak accident.]

Hope that all will be well

Fire forces evacuation of Israel's Yad Vashem: Yad Vashem is one of Israel's national treasures, home to a museum and memorials for the victims of the Holocaust

Yad Vashem is one of Israel's national treasures, home to a museum and memorials for the victims of the Holocaust. Foreign dignitaries routinely stop at Yad Vashem when visiting the country.

The memorial holds some 140 million pages of Holocaust documentation, the world's largest such collection. It also exhibits artifacts, such as shoes, photographs, suitcases and recorded testimonies of Holocaust victims and survivors.

It also has an eternal flame in its "Hall of Remembrance," as well as the "Hall of Names," where it is collecting the identities of the 6 million Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazis and their sympathizers during World War II.

Unforgivable

This family lost everything, including 3 dogs and a cat, because they didn't pay a nearby city $75 to be included in the list of rural residents who could expect firefighting efforts. Instead, the firefighters came and doused a neighbour who had paid's field to make sure the fire didn't spread, but otherwise watched the family's home burn to the ground. What if a child or other person had been inside? Would they have lifted a finger then?

No pay, no spray: Firefighters let home burn

The fire department's decision to let the home burn was "incredibly irresponsible," said the president of an association representing firefighters.

"Professional, career firefighters shouldn’t be forced to check a list before running out the door to see which homeowners have paid up," Harold Schatisberger, International Association of Fire Fighters president, said in a statement. "They get in their trucks and go."

My best friend, who was also outraged by this story, described the city's practice as a protection racket. Given that the county doesn't have a fire service and the city (who's mayor was completely unapologetic) is the only game in town, I have to agree. The homeowner had begged the firefighters to intervene and offered to pay the fee, or more.

South Fulton's mayor said that the fire department can't let homeowners pay the fee on the spot, because the only people who would pay would be those whose homes are on fire.

Um...really, do you believe that? That's a stupid assertion. I think I'd be selling my land, moving to a area with a sane government, and paying my taxes elsewhere.

Hands on learning

Fire in Chemistry-Physics Building

From now on, students in one lab will remember that water causes ignited sodium hydride to flash. Isopropanol is the recommended agent for putting out the fire. Fortunately no one was hurt.

Back in the day, when I was very much a chemistry geek (I took 2 years of it in high school, a summer's worth of organic, and missed bypassing two semesters of introductory chemistry in college plus the lab by something like 3 points on a test), I remember a fire in our lab. Someone (well, I do remember who, but won't name names) had left their experiment involving napthalene running and had gone to get a coke or something. The teacher was talking to a textbook salesman in the next room. There was a pop and then burning fumes and little flakes of naptha sediment floating about. I ran over with the fire blanket, which was instinctual but not useful, as we were talking a ring assembly. I then looked carefully, turned off the bunsen burner and blew out the fire on the fumes. I then calmly walked next door to tell the teacher, and apparently one look at my face and he went running. No harm done. But I remember those moments in excruciating detail, as if time slowed. And to date this somewhat, music was playing from a radio, and it happened to be the Talking Heads' 'Burning Down the House'. :)

Ah, good times. My point is the kids in this lab will probably remember the incident well due to the burst of adrenaline. I wonder if they had music playing, and if so, what?

You don't see that everyday, thank goodness

Rare ‘fire tornado’ filmed in Brazil

The video's quite impressive. Drought and high winds have been fanning brush fires, and a whirlwind of fire was caught on video stretching up into the sky.

Please pray to whatever God that you hold dear to ease the suffering of these small children

Little hope for babies burned in Romanian fire

Israeli doctors who rushed to Romania on Wednesday said they feared there was not much they could do to help seven premature infants who were critically burned in a hospital fire that left four other babies dead.

Romanian doctors at Bucharest's Grigore Alexandrescu children's hospital where the injured babies are being treated said the infants weigh just 1 to 2.5 kilograms (2.2 to 5.5 pounds) and are burned on up to 80 per cent of their bodies and respiratory tracts.

Monday's blaze at Giulesti maternity hospital forced the evacuation of dozens of babies and women -- some in labour. The accident provoked a wave of public indignation, throwing light on Romania's poorly funded and understaffed health system.

Romanian health official Marius Savu said there had been one nurse on duty at the intensive care unit instead of the mandatory four because of staffing cuts, Mediafax news agency reported.

Doctor Josef Haik, part of a team from Tel Aviv University, told reporters that "I don't think we can do any more here."

Nurse charged with murder in Romanian hospital fire

Iacob said last week that medical staff at the hospital were in another room, apparently having a celebration, when the blaze broke out.

The fire started in an electrical cable attached to the air-conditioning unit of the intensive care room, according to prosecutors' preliminary conclusions. It quickly swept through the room, burning incubators and melting medical equipment.

Another member of the medical staff, not Cirstea, was the one who called for help when the blaze was discovered, Iacob said.

Surveillance camera footage released by the government last week showed medical staff and parents frantically trying to enter the burning intensive care unit, using a chair to break down automatic doors. The doors could only be opened with an access card, which no one had at the time. Seconds later, the hallway filled with smoke.

The fire broke out on August 16th. The temperature in the room had reached 400 degrees Fahrenheit, according to authorities. These are babies that are premature, with immature airways that have been burnt as well as their skin. Please keep them and their families in your thoughts. I had not heard of this story until YKWIA told me about it.

Sometimes a cat can be man's best friend

Cat alerts sleeping couple of house fire

The search is on for Baby.

The white, brown and gray tabby is credited with rescuing a couple by rousting them from sleep when fire broke out in their Wonder Lake home early Monday. But Baby disappeared after everyone escaped.

The cat uncharacteristically jumped on them as they slept on the couch, alerting them to the smoke-filled state of the house. The couple are expecting twins in a couple of months, so that's four human lives saved, plus their dog. I hope they find their cat; she's 13 and strictly and inside cat, and very much a heroine.

Going through my Google Reader feeds

Dozens of elderly closer to death than rescue: Nursing home is near airport but also deep inside a maze of angry refugees

Senegal offers land to Haitians

Nine cameraman sorry for missing Haiti girl rescue footage: An Australian television cameraman apologised to his news director for missing images of a baby rescue in Haiti because he had put his camera down to help the infant, it has emerged

Haiti's voodoo priests object to mass burials

Stop using the word “looting!”

What constitutes “looting” in an area that has been reduced to rubble? Not waiting in front of a collapsed grocery store for the cashier to return? I suppose people should not eat until they have the opportunity to pay someone for food? Is that what “civilized” people would do?

Girl killed, 4,000 homeless in Manila slum fire: Blaze guts hundreds of shanties near Philippines capital

Mauritania fatwa bans female genital mutilation

Were mixed Christian-Jewish marriages possible in late medieval Poland?

NASA: Options dwindling for Mars Spirit rover: NASA exploring Mars rover options, including making Spirit a static lab

Is it really doomsday for books? Not while English casts its spell: Economic and technological changes have freed the English language from the shackles of empire and expanded its reach still wider (Thanks, birdie)

Iraq reclaims a Jewish history it once shunned (Thanks, Steven)

Science project prompts SD [San Diego] school evacuation
(On Slashdot: garg0yle writes:

"Police in San Diego were called to investigate an 11-year-old's science project, consisting of 'a motion detector made out of an empty Gatorade bottle and some electronics,' after the vice-principal came to the conclusion that it was a bomb. Charges aren't being laid against the youth, but it's being recommended that he and his family 'get counseling.' Apparently, the student violated school policies — I'm assuming these are policies against having any kind of independent thought?")

Should I be concerned

that a fire truck or two and an ambulance came up with lights flashing (but no sirens) in front of my apartment building, stayed awhile, and then eventually left? Hopefully nothing was truly wrong. One of my gaming buddies got a scare Saturday night when part of her complex caught fire and burnt down. She and her things were alright, although she and her neighbours were evacuated until 4 am and the smoke detectors didn't go off--they were roused by people banging on doors. The apartment her sister occupied until recently was gutted, having been close to where the fire began. Scary.

It's been a weird day in that we had a huge storm with lots of lightning, car accidents all over the place (including a very bad tractor trailer accident that closed the Interstate), and flash flooding (although I don't think it was on Louisville's scale). Fortunately I got from one workplace to another right before the storm hit.