Las Vegas Dodges Poisonous Gas Bullet

[stopbush]

And yet the Rs tell us that transporting nuclear waste across the country to Yucca Mountain would be safe.

'LAS VEGAS DODGED A BULLET': Chlorine-hauling tanker rolls free

Workers able to board, activate brake

By LISA KIM BACH and BETH WALTON
REVIEW-JOURNAL 8/30/7

ODOR LIKE BLEACH WOULD GIVE WARNING OF POISONOUS GAS

It could have gone either way.

For a brief slice of time Wednesday morning, the difference between disaster and a normal day in Las Vegas was hitched to a runaway train tanker loaded with hazardous chlorine gas.

The tanker, which escaped the Arden train yard, located south of state Route 160, picked up speed on the downhill and cut a 20-mile swath through the urban heart of Clark County, racing west of the resort corridor and past densely populated neighborhoods around the Union Pacific tracks.

It finally came to rest in North Las Vegas after Union Pacific maintenance workers boarded the tanker, activated the hand brake and ended the threat of an accidental release of poisonous gas.

"Las Vegas dodged a bullet there," said Steve Calanog, the Environmental Protection Agency's chief of emergency response for the Southwest region. "Had the train car released its contents in a residential area, the results could have been tragic."

http://www.lvrj.com/news/9466232.html

[Purveyor]

1. Whew... Chlorine gas is some nasty stuff, indeed! n/t

[stopbush]

2. "ODOR LIKE BLEACH WOULD GIVE WARNING OF POISONOUS GAS." ?????

How does that work? Isn't the bleach smell contained in the gas itself? In other words, if you're smelling bleach, are you not inhaling the gas?

[kestrel91316]

3. Should read: ".......would give warning of imminent death."

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

4. Well, yeah...

But you have to inhale a significant amount of gas in order to get hurt.

And you can smell it at low concentrations.