Not being from a rural or small town, I've been wondering how you could end up with a really big bomb in the heart of your town.
This article,
Why did West, Texas, build homes and a school next to a 'time bomb'? tries to go into that question.
...like most West residents, Kucera exhibited no animosity or anger toward the plant owner or town officials who allowed construction so close to an explosives storage site.
Instead, he saw the danger as a natural tradeoff of rural farming existence, where danger is always a factor amid killer tornadoes, whirring threshers, pipelines and gas storage facilities necessary to survive on America's rural fringe. In the case of the West Fertilizer Plant, its very products boosted the fertility of both crops and the economy.
"That plant was part of our town and what happened is part of living in a farming town," Kucera says. "You accept a certain level of risk, just as people living in cities do."
Sounds very similar to something I just read about the horrible pollution and environmental damage in many parts of China. The residents are not blind to the risk or where it's coming from, but it's something they accept as a cost of economic development.
Previous Topic
Index
