I am not sure where the saying originated, but never was it truer than on Christmas Eve in a suburb not that far from where I live. Early on Christmas Eve (around 06h00) a tanker driver transporting LPG gas apparently took a wrong turn and in trying to back to the highway, got stuck under a railway bridge on a narrow road close to a hospital. The tanker then caught fire. Many people in the area went to have a look and take pictures and film videos of the burning truck, many of them far too close for their own safety.
In a catastrophic turn of events, the tanker exploded. The blast and fire resulted in instant death for at least 10 people with a further 50 seriously or critically wounded and burned. Nearby houses caught alight as did a few cars. Many buildings including the hospital were badly damaged. The ceilings in the hospital ER collapsed and a number of people were injured as well which meant that the ER had to be closed and precious time eaten up as patients needed to be transported to hospitals further away.
Some staff and members of the public who were in the hospital car park were caught up in the blast with most of them sustaining burn wounds that would result in their death in the following days. And a bit further away, bystanders who went to see what was happening (and some others who happened to be in their yards at the time) were also badly burned or injured. Within a week, the death total was sitting at 34 with many people still fighting for their lives in hospital. Tragically, there were young children among the dead.
This was an horrific incident and as hard as the truth is to swallow, many of the deaths were preventable. There will be a blame game for some time to come with the driver receiving death threats, political parties calling for the transport company’s CEO to be arrested and charged with murder, the emergency services being accused of not handling the situation optimally and so on. None of this will bring back the people who died, but the most sobering thought of all was that all because of the innate curiosity of humans, lives were unnecessarily lost.
There is nothing anyone can say that will make the coming months and years easier for the families affected, but if there is one lesson we can all hope came out of this is when coming across an accident or dangerous incident or situation that we rather stay away or just move past instead of letting our curiosity get the better of us, preventing unnecessary injury or worse.
There are so many questions that will remain unanswered but my hope is that as humans we will learn to control our own environment and in so doing, our own safety.