Episode 170: Indiana State Fair Coliseum Explosion
en
November 24, 2024
TLDR: The podcast discusses emergency management, encourages donation to Lutheran Settlement House, and announces tour dates in various cities. Tour dates are marked as sold out for New York City, Somerville MA (twice), and NYC again. Additional stops include Washington DC and Philadelphia, PA.
In this episode of Well There's Your Problem, hosts Justin Rosnek, November Kelly, and Liam McAnderson dive into a significant disaster in Indiana's history—the 1963 Indiana State Fair Coliseum explosion. This tragic event serves as a stark reminder of what happens when safety protocols are disregarded in large venues.
Background of the Coliseum
The Indiana State Fair Coliseum, constructed in 1939 as a multi-purpose arena, has seen various events, from professional ice hockey to concerts. On the night of October 31, 1963, it was hosting a popular event, Holiday on Ice, with over 4,300 attendees.
Critical Safety Oversights
Fire Inspections Lapse
The Indiana Fire Department was under significant budget constraints, resulting in infrequent fire inspections of the Coliseum. The fire chief erroneously believed that the state-owned structure fell outside his jurisdiction, leading to minimal oversight. The last thorough inspection occurred only right before the state fair, meaning that safety checks conducted throughout the year were virtually non-existent.
Improper Propane Storage
Compounding the problem was the improper storage of propane tanks beneath the Coliseum seats. During the event, the heated area ignited and caused an explosion that resulted in a 700 square foot section of the seating area becoming airborne, ultimately leading to the death of 81 individuals and leaving over 400 injured.
The Tragic Sequence of Events
- As the show concluded at approximately 11:06 PM, an enormous explosion echoed through the auditorium.
- Initially, many spectators thought it was part of the show until they saw the devastation.
- The chaos escalated with a secondary explosion soon after, creating an internal fireball that engulfed the debris and injured even more victims.
Emergency Response Failures
The emergency response to the explosion suffered from a severe lack of coordination:
- Traffic congestion caused by emergency vehicles hampered the arrival of medical aid.
- EMS faced massive delays; ambulances often took victims to the nearest rather than best-equipped hospitals.
- Poor communication between different aid organizations resulted in an inefficient retrieval of the deceased and injured, culminating in a failure to segregate areas safely for crowd control.
Legal and Administrative Consequences
After extensive investigations:
- Multiple indictments were filed against city officials and the gas company. However, due to the convoluted nature of assigning blame, most were acquitted.
- The disaster prompted reforms concerning equipment storage protocols and fire inspection duties in similar venues across Indiana.
Conclusion: Lessons Learned
The Indiana State Fair Coliseum explosion underscores the vital importance of emergency management and stringent adherence to safety regulations in public venues. The catastrophe not only devastated families but also highlighted critical flaws in the system meant to protect them. Moving forward, it became evident that proactive safety measures and effective communication in crisis situations can save lives.
Key Takeaways:
- Regular Safety Inspections: Conducting thorough inspections can prevent disasters like the Coliseum explosion.
- Proper Storage of Hazardous Materials: Storage protocols for flammable materials such as propane are critical in public venues.
- Effective Emergency Response: Coordination among emergency services can significantly impact victim survival rates in disaster scenarios.
This episode acts as both a cautionary tale and a clarion call for enhancing safety measures in public spaces, ensuring history does not repeat itself.
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I will I will simply buy a new audio interface. Okay. Okay. This is that that's it. I don't know if that's the most efficient way of doing that, but it doesn't matter. I will. You computer it. Just completely replace every aspect of your life. I've bought a new audio interface every week. The podcast is not it's not even breaking even at this point.
Yeah, my tech setup is how would you describe it? Ship of Theseus? Yes. I'm about to have to take the ship of Theseus out of the harbor because I'm going to have to move this computer. All you lose hard drives are going to be rolling around.
This is going to have to get out of this corner, out of the apartment, into a Nissan Juke, and then a cross town. I had Juke. I don't know. That's what the car rental place had. And then into the new apartment, down a really narrow flight of stairs. Glasgow tenement stair types situation. Yes.
into into the new flats. And yeah, so I have the travel rig as a backup. I have a laptop and a microphone for that. So if I suddenly sound worse for a while, it is because something has gone something else has gone wrong in the move.
Oh my God. Oh, moving is the most exciting thing. My favorite thing and my favorite thing, especially, is to move with rods who is the worst mover in the world. Well, what I've discovered I don't like moving is having to give you a landlord or the letting agency like an ultimatum, like a full on like the full on. This is unacceptable letter before you've even moved in. Yeah, it's not a tough pickle.
I'm in a situation. I'm in a situation because I rented a furnished flat and they decided the day before giving me the keys to take half the furniture out of it and then go, is that okay? And I have to now go, no, it isn't. No, it's not. Give me my shit back. Give me your shit back. Yeah, get your shit back in the apartment or like give me like a reduction on the rent, you know?
I hate landlords. I hate lesson agencies. We should sink. We should do the same. We should probably do the sink. Yeah. Three, two, one, mark. Okey-dokey. I like that Devon put in the notes or put in when they flash something up. I left this in so you can see how good they're getting at it. I'm so proud of them. That did make my day. That did make my day. Beautiful. Thanks, Devon. It's positive reinforcement, you know. It's very important.
positive reinforcement works on me. Negative reinforcement does it because I'll just ignore you. I also love that we destroyed it later in that episode. It was that was also beautiful, beautiful symmetry. Something went wrong later in the episode and we just done did all that good work. And you know what? That's why they keep coming back. They love it. Not Devin. Devin would rather be more professional. I mean, the hogs keep coming back. They love the chaos. Yeah, enjoy your slop. Yeah.
All right. Let's do this. Hello and welcome to, well, there's your problem. It's a podcast about engineering disasters with slides. I'm Justin Rosnek. I'm the person who's talking right now. My pronouns are he and him. Okay, go. I'm November Kelly. I'm the person who's talking now. My pronouns are she and her. Yay, Liam. Yay, Liam. Hi, I'm Liam McAnderson. I'm about to avenge Nova's apartment calamity. Please, please. You have my sword.
My pronouns are he and him. And with us, we have not a guest, not a guest. No, my name is Garth Dennis. Hello. I'm also a co-host temporarily. Don't worry, everyone. You'll get rid of me soon. That sounded like I know my own demise is in inbound. My pronouns are he and him, of course, but.
We put you on like a performance improvement plan after like two episodes. It's like we're really trying to line shit up. We've got you move to a basement office and you're just getting, you're just getting the sense that the walls are closing in a bit. Yeah. I did wonder, I did wonder about the town. Gareth's stapler. Yeah, you withdrew, withdrew my toilet privileges as well. I was, I didn't wonder about that.
Let's do the episode. Oh, no. But first we have to advertise something that's I mean, I'm so amazed that we have any faces left, given how well it's been selling. The goddamn tour. Oh, that note, the announcements are on the second slide. Oh, right. I keep doing this. I keep jumping ahead. And now performance review. Yeah. Yeah, you are actually going to be guillotine there, but sorry. I know you have a family, but it's time to go. That's that's a demerit right there. Yeah.
God damn it. That's the cause in fired for cause. What's going on? Tell us what's happening to us. What do you see in the screen in front of you is the interior of the Indiana State Fair Coliseum? Oh, shitty view. This is particularly abstracted.
You may like the guy standing here, bottom right in the, I mean, it's a great scale photo, but like with clearly with his arms crossed, just surveying the damage. Like, guys, I got buffed out as that. That's the official pose of, well, there's your problem. That's a, you hit one of these, you know? Yeah. That guy is saying, well, there's your problem. Yeah. Yeah. Also, is that piñata dog?
It's also just on some remaining concrete possibly. Yeah, golly. So you may notice there are some seats missing and wall has fallen over. Whoops. Today, we're going to talk about the 1963 Indiana State Fair Coliseum explosion. Oh, OK. Yes.
Now, there's a quote from the Reverend Fred Rogers that's often dragged out when there's a tragedy or a disaster or something. Or Trump wins somehow. Yeah, exactly. That sounds unlikely. I can't believe that Kamala Harris is going to be president.
Fred Rogers said, when I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, look for the helpers. You will always find people are helping. To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother's words and I'm always comforted by realizing there are still so many helpers, so many caring people in this world. Sure, it's beautiful.
Yeah, that's for kids. That's not for you. Today, we're going to learn what happens when there are a lot of helpers. Oh, boy. Maybe too many of them. Oh, God. Well, I'll crush my childhood sense of security. Exactly. But first, we have to do announcements.
fake me out. I don't have a drop for this. No announcement strong. There we go. Let's say an answer. There we go. Right. Announcements.
No, no, no. The New York City and Boston shows that we advertised earlier have sold out. We have added an extra New York City show and an extra Boston show. Links to tickets for that will be in the description. They're on the 29th and 30th of April, respectively, I believe. I can't wait until we keep adding shows as they sell out. And we end up booking me into what is functionally a six-month East Coast residency.
Yeah, that's gonna be, that's gonna be a lot of episodes to put together. Yeah, we're hard to the God. We're gonna do an episode on cocaine as we're on cocaine.
I've never done Coke in my life. But I think if ever there was a time to do it, it would be like two minutes before going on stage for the cocaine live show. That would be pretty good. On the other hand, if I say that to customs and immigration, I will never be allowed to enter the United States again. So let's not do a cocaine show. What are you doing in a cocaine show? I already did not do drugs.
Yeah. As for the other shows in Washington, D.C., we still have about a third of the tickets left as of recording time in Philadelphia at the Fillmore. We need to fill more seats. Yeah, please. That's what they call about. Exactly. So by those tickets there, there's still about half of them left. Sorry if the tickets are kind of expensive. We don't control the prices. It's a live nation ticket master thing outside of our control.
Yeah, well, the Sony Hall where we're playing because we're playing Times Square, a real sentence I have to say now. Yeah, you did say that. They sent me an email after I signed I was testing something for the pot and they were like coming to like Sony Hall. Well, there's your problem. Like, yeah, I fucking know, man. I booked that show. Well, the booking agent booked that show, but I don't exactly.
Um, do we want to talk about the toy drive or do you have? Yeah, I talk about the tour. Right. Yeah. Great. So last year, hogs, uh, you rate. So I was talking to, uh, my, I'm going to get her title wrong. Erica, if you're listening, I'm sorry. Uh, she's like our development director. So head of like fundraising and stuff like that. Uh, the hogs have donated between when we started donating last year. So like November of 2023 to about now.
The hogs have raised $27,683 thereabouts, which is a tremendous amount of money for the place I work, which is called Lutheran Settlement House. We do social work, we do domestic violence, counseling, prevention, housing. We have a senior center, we have a food pantry, kind of everything to everyone, especially with Mayor Parker putting her in, in competent thumb up or equally incompetent ass. Might have to bleep that Devon, but.
But yeah, so the hogs have been glorious, but I am appealing to the hogs today because, uh, because I once again, we are doing the toy drive for kids that are sheltered. That's called Jane Adams place and kids in our domestic violence program. Uh, I will fully rise into linking. We have an Amazon wish list. That's the easiest way for us to do this. We're not doing the PO box like last time because I've got sick of going to the PO box every day and having the post office employees be like, that motherfucker is again.
You were literally bringing toys to at risk youth and the and the post office were like this motherfucker once I've to see his face again once I told them what I was doing they became very sympathetic instantaneously Which was pretty fun. I bet that you have a massive guilt card to play on anyone who fucks with you Which I think is really like, you know, it's not a very well rewarded task But that's one of the few perks that there are you know
Yeah, absolutely. They were like, Oh, come in the back, get a cart. And they would like hook me up at the loading dock, which was pretty funny. It's like the rewards are the laughter of children and making a postal worker feel just horrible about themselves. I hope not. So I rolled my eyes at the guy who is basically Santa.
Yeah, I'll also Jewish Santa. I'm Monica Harry really. But yeah, if you if you want to donate toys, I would appreciate it. I'll also have the just the donation link to Luther and settlement house. If you hate toys and want your dollars to not go to children at all, but exclusively to hungry people and our seniors. If you're on some kind of anti natalist beef, but you're still charitable. So you're like,
Fuck these kids, but also like, you know, I want to do a good deed. I guess you could do that. Yeah. Well, I'm all I'm going to say is another year has gone past and you know, these children they need the scale model or cajunters, you know, and they're there to have a comment. I've already seen the comments pop it up. I was I was very pleased about that. Yeah, I will say to those of you, there are some people who have donated
I'm not, I don't have the names in front of me. I don't want to docks anyone essentially. But I do want to say there are several of our listeners who have donated in the thousands of dollars. That is so generous. And that is extremely generous. And if there's now a flag in our flag in our donation software database,
So that if you donate and it gets flagged, yeah, Liam, and I have time in between whatever it is I do at work, I will be writing you a note on a post it within reason because they're censoring me. I've already been told numerous times that I will be censored.
All right, that is my plug. Thank you for listening. Thank you for giving us money. Thank you for enabling us to help survivors of domestic violence, old people and the hungry. We are deeply appreciative of it. Absolutely. Yes. All right. I'm saying that like I did something. I didn't do shit. That says that. Well, no, you're on the podcast and therefore getting the message out. You know, I guess so. I guess. Exactly. This is a group effort here. It's just that Liam's doing most of it.
As Enverr Hoja said, between the Albanians and the Chinese, we comprise like over a quarter of the Earth's population. Yeah. I mean, this is this is maybe not group effort. The word I would use there is group project. Yeah, one person does most of the work. OK, I need to be very clear. There are.
People who are doing the work with like it's working at jane atoms and working with survivors of domestic violence much more intimately than i do i, and i just want to say they are they they deserve the none of the credit i deserve all of it. I am i am i have i have leon the great powerful you're fucking kids.
Just put that on like a sort of rainbow like animated text, you know, unicorn across the screen. Don't hit your kids. Yeah. The more you know, yeah, let's get into the meat and potatoes. I was about to say that was just a minute of time. That was nice and uplifting. So it's time to do the goddamn news. Must be. Yeah, we blow it.
we live in hell. The once and future president has returned. You see here before you on the screen, the text that I sent to my extremely worried group chats, the night of the election when I was going to bed and I was like, I'm not going to stay up for this. I'm not going to torture myself because it's going to be fine.
it's gonna be fine it's gonna be like a gonna get a shitty liberal and things are gonna continue basically the same why stay up why why feel anything about this and unfortunately.
As a sufferer of OCD, what I realize now is in that moment, I failed to observe my rituals and my compulsive behaviors. And I jinxed it and I caused Donald Trump to become president again. So I'm very sorry. If you're looking at like net good and evil, this podcast is put out into the world. Liam is helping the kids. I got Donald Trump reelected.
I did all of my rituals. Yeah. And it still didn't work. Wouldn't know because I didn't do mine, right? This is the thing. We're all working for the one OCD person who didn't do the thing. And that's me. It's my fault this happened.
Uh, I will say, uh, I, I, whatever, he's a shitty pro life Democrat, but a Bob Casey refusing to wave the flag like two weeks in or whatever. Oh my God. We're eight days out from the election. Yeah. It's only been a week. Yeah. I love the gates is going to be attorney general folks. Uh, Elon Musk is going to be the, the, the, I'm pretty sure that's just the blue ribbon commission in order to get them out of the way.
But even still, like, I don't know, plus he might kill everyone. Like, here's a toy you can play with. Go away. Like, mandatory, mandatory neural link for every US citizen. That's, that's what we're seeing in two years time.
I know a lot of a lot of people out there are struggling and like even from an ocean away I kind of am too because the whole planet's a little bit fucked off of this. I worry a lot for Americans. I worry a lot for my American friends. And I mean, I didn't, I gotta be honest, I was, I felt the vibes that things weren't going calm this way. And I ignored them. I was like,
I'm going to listen to the polls. I'm going to listen to JN, Seltzer or whatever. And I was wrong to do that. What I should have been doing is turning my light switches on and off an equal number and even number of times that's a multiple of four but not of six until it feels right. And I didn't do that. And now this is happening.
I had a conversation with my dad about politics, which is something I can very rarely do right after Kamala got the nomination when Biden dropped out. Yeah. I was like, do you think she's got the juice? And dad was like, no. And I was like, no, I don't think so either. And then we are.
I had to suppress that feeling for the rest of the election. I was like, yeah, I don't think she's going to do it. But it didn't seem to me. How many people, including me on the left or even on the center left, like sort of left liberals or whatever, that whole sphere managed to convince ourselves that she was going to pull it off because she was brat.
Yeah, that really, really, really serious group thing here, I think. Yeah, for real. The other weird thing is, you know, just how I would say this election has been very parasocial in a lot of ways. I don't know if it's the first one, but this applies to both sides because a lot of people who voted for Trump were like, you know, they interviewed afterwards.
I don't think he's going to do all the bad stuff. I think he's just saying that, you know, for laughs. There were people who voted for Trump and then voted Democrat down ticket in order to like put a break on Trump somehow. Yeah. But then there is also like a similar thing with like a Kamala, you know, one of the things is I don't know if you remember any of the big group calls that were, you know, one of the
Yeah, and one of them was like, I'm sorry to do this because I know some of the people who organized that are probably listening. There was one that was like train lovers for Harris. And I looked at that and I was like, what are you talking about? She's not going to do any of that.
And now she definitely won't. They already did infrastructure. They're not going to touch that again. Everyone was projecting everything they liked onto both of the candidates. And they kind of, I don't know, they went nowhere. I looked at her policy page, which is still up yesterday. I was like, and I looked at it and I was like,
There's nothing of substance here. There ain't shit there. Yeah. I mean, people were talking about up. How do you say, uh, you know, Democrats should have campaigned on this or that. They should have been less woke. They should have been so on and so forth. Um, I think they should have had a policy. I think that would have just one, that would have helped. Yeah. Just one single policy. I think would have been a nice thing to, to say, Hey, vote for us and we will deliver this to you.
The Labour Party got involved, didn't they? Yes. The Labour Party are allergic to having any policies other than occasionally ones that are extremely harmful to vulnerable people, such as trans people. So, you know, yeah, no, you're getting involved to get it. I have a question. I have a question. So, dark Brandon, right?
I'm trying to. Everyone made a huge deal about his his rail credentials, right? And so, you know, made this huge fuss about this big infrastructure investment. How much of any of that actually is progressed at all? And is that is all of it just going to get canceled? I assume that none of it even got to the point that it will need to be canceled by the Republicans, because I don't know of any actual rail projects that were actually being progressed on them, just big talk. So what's actually where we actually act with any of that, Rose?
I would say the sum total of progress, which has been made. The New Orleans to mobile train is probably going to go through. They're too far in on that. There is now one extra train from Chicago to Minneapolis. Can we get the funding approved for more Pennsylvanians? Yes, that's also going through. There's going to be one extra train from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh at the cost of several hundred million dollars. Make sense. Be useful.
That's mostly improvements for Norfolk Southern. What a legacy to maybe be the worst American president. There is a lot of Northeast Corridor improvements which are going through at this point. They're mostly bridge replacements. They're replacing the BNP Tunnel in Baltimore. They are probably going to manage to force through the Gateway Tunnel in New York City this time around.
Uh, but that's all, you know, Northeast corridor improvements, you know, it projects like expanding the long distance and track network or like, uh, you know, replacing the long distance fleet. Uh, that that's all up in the air. Still, I mean, so that so that so the Democrats did the classic thing and they do this with women's rights that is with all this stuff where they say,
They basically don't do it and don't do it so that they can hang it over everyone for the next election. And they've been doing that for 40 years where they say, oh, you have to vote, I said, so that we can, you know, codify Wade v. Rowan. You know, we have to just wait till the next one. Then, you know, then we'll do it. Then it never happens. This is the most important election of our lifetimes because, you know, it's another opportunity about John Kerry in 2004. Yeah. Yeah. I think if they had maybe made this election about codifying Roe versus Wade, they might have had a better
I disagree, because they relied on abortion too much in the final weeks, and nobody gave a shit. I kind of feel like none of us know is the thing. I made the mistake of thinking I knew what was going on, or I knew what I was talking about. I know I have no qualifications to do so. I made the mistake of thinking things could ever be good, which I know I shouldn't. And I didn't touch light switch is enough. I touched grass instead of light switch.
You didn't flip the light switch three times. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. Like three times would have been wrong. Like four times unless it feels wrong. And then if it does feel wrong, then you have to eight and then 12. But then. But then you've had no effect because the light's gone on. And you have to have an odd number to have an effect. No, no, no, that's not. Well, OK, sure. But then either the lights are always on or always off. Yeah, correct. Yeah. This is the self, Ross.
Don't worry about the lights in my house. I know how many furniture in there Just turning the light on and off on an empty room But yeah, no, I mean obviously the thing is right we can go through because it's everybody's fault It's like it is your fault for if you voted for her not voting for her enough It's your fault if you didn't vote for her. It's Joe Biden's fault for like setting her up to fail. It's
her fault for losing. It's Tim Walz's fault for, I don't know. It's double Trump's fault for winning. Tim Walz, I feel like I got a bit too much of the muzzle put on him. Yeah, they were scared of him being relatable.
Yeah, exactly. It's like Devin's fault for telling you not to vote. It's fucking Putin's fault, probably or something because of Russia gate. You can play this blame game all day and it kind of doesn't matter because all we really know is that even if you have the perfect theory of change and of how to win elections, the Democratic Party have indicated to you that they are not going to listen
right? They're going to do the thing that they want to do. They're going to run things their way and their way loses every time.
Yeah, I mean, about about all you can say as well. I went poorly, but I don't know if it could go in a different way. Yeah, no, I don't. I don't know if there was a campaign that could have run in three months where she was like vice president of someone's unpopular as Joe Biden that could have won. Even if there had been, she would never have run it because, you know, the people involved were just never going to feel comfortable doing that.
Yeah, so here's the thing. I'm a moron, right? That's absolutely for that day. But I have just written a book that did a lot of discussing, I kind of repeat the point that people can get too locked into kind of fluctuation events and not look at the macro. The macro here is that, and it's the same in the UK with the budget, we just had, to be honest,
We just had a budget that says it's record investment. And yet none of that will be seen by the lowest income people. And that's exactly what happened with the big investment strategy of the Democrats. We're investing all this money in it. Well, you refuse to acknowledge that people are suffering.
I don't think any different, I don't think any campaign could have won this for the Democrats because they'd fucked it by their broad economic policy of we're going to do big investment, but it's all going to disappear into big corporations to make line go up rather than to actually land in the pockets of people who are struggling.
And the only person who's actually promising economic change was Trump. Yeah, I maintain the theory that the Democrats could have run basically anyone besides maybe a couple of people and Trump would have won. And I think a lot of his people like Trump. And it's hard. It's hard for us on the left to get that. But like, I, I, like, I don't fuck it like the guy I think he's a lunatic moron, but people love him. And I was reading the New York Times article that came out today because I, I am a moron as well about
like what undecided voters in 2024 and who they voted for. And number one, I have a bone to pick with the there's a woman in their named like McLean. Like that's her given shame. McLean? Yes. Yeah. And she was like, I was I was swayed by the Trump they them vote like I was going to vote by before that. And she voted she wrote in Romney in 2020. And it was like,
uh-huh you're you've lying scumbag but i do think i do think that like yeah people wanted to vote for trump and like we have to deal with that on the left and even with our liberal friends friends sort of in quotes there yeah yeah i i mean we have to learn
I mean, the stuff that people like about Trump is that he's funny and he feels like he's gonna like be strong and he's gonna like fuck with and trigger all of the like liberal institutions that everybody hates. I do like two of those three things already, right? So like, if there's a lesson from this, it's to like fucking get more like a podcast, I guess, or kill yourself. I don't know.
left the left Joe Rogan, apparently. Jesus Christ. It was called come town. Well, yeah, actually, I mean, you know, this is the thing. That was a big piece of discourse like a couple of days ago. You know, there's this whole ecosystem of left wing podcast that, you know, showed up over the past, you know, eight years or so since the Bernie run. And I guess the liberals just have no idea we exist.
Yeah, we didn't like move the needle at all because we didn't want to because we felt like ambiguous and I'm because we felt I'm going to come out and endorse Kamala Harris. No, I'd rather end the podcast beat you to the death of a sword.
I just I think yeah, maybe I'm oversimplifying but I think when when when a lot of people in the US are feeling fucked as in like the cost of living is getting worse the amount they can actually get for a dollar is getting smaller.
And there's two parties, and one of them says, we ain't changing shit. And the other one says, I'm going to do change, even if it's fascism, then you're going to be inclined to vote for the person who does something. Because at the moment, you're fucked. And someone telling you we're not going to change anything is not appealing. Yeah, I mean, I said, this is never going to learn this.
I said this on TF right because like one of the things that Riley on there is trying to contextualize this in is within this like global shift right woods right and it need not always be so that's not just like weather you know it's because of stuff happening but speaking of weather one of the things that like is like
profoundly affecting this is climate change, right? And we, we saw in Spain, I don't know, we probably should have put this in as a separate notes thing, but I want to talk about it now. We saw like absolutely catastrophic flooding, like caused by climate change, like hundreds of people dead. And I'm just Santiago Calatrava.
putting that big arch center where the river's supposed to be. And Spain has a sort of center left government that clung on by its fingernails and coalition in the last election. And their reward for that is something that just makes it obvious how untenable this whole thing is. And of course, that's going to drive you into the arms of whatever party is like, you know, what's causing this shit is immigrants or whatever.
Um, yeah, I was about to say about the Democratic party going hard in anti-immigrant was a bad idea. It was a dropped opposition to the death penalty. Of course, no one just wanted to do anything about Gaza. No one touched that issue. No, they made that way worse. They sent, uh, what's this? They lost Michigan off that shit. Like whatever anyone tells you that it doesn't matter. Like they, they, they lost like big cities in Michigan. They lost the college towns in Michigan because they were like kids were getting fucking pepper sprite.
Yeah, the kids just didn't show up to vote. I mean, that was definitely, well, obviously kids are under 18. They should not show up to vote. That's voter fraud. But the young people did not show up to vote. I know can blame them. So I turned 18 in 2009.
So I voted socialist in 2012. I voted for Hillary Clinton and I voted Democrat since because they've all been fucking against Trump. Who regardless of his politics, I just, I can't stand his voice like his speaking voice. And when people do their Trump impressions, it makes me mad. Oh, I'm glad you said that sentence. Cause I was, I was gearing up. I was not. I am. I people do like friend of the show, Tom Payne does it does like a pretty spot on Trump impression. And it makes me furious.
I will beat you to death with your own shoes Is he triggered? I don't know
But I was just like, I can't stand this asshole. And my entire. Should we bring out the fish? Should we bring out the fish? And my entire, whatever you want to call it, like voting career. It's been just like, Oh, this is the most important. You're like, like, we'll do it this time, you guys. Like, well, yeah, we'll, we'll make life measurably better for and then just don't.
Yeah, that's what Gareth was just saying. And I wanted to reinforce that. It's like when when people can't buy like eggs and meat, they're going to vote for the other guy, even if the other guy is like, as long as they just say change, because the medium builder is a dipshit, I think. But it's also to say that, you know, that no one was going to address, you know, the big sources of inflation that have been obvious in our, you know, fixed costs that everyone has, you know, rent.
health care, higher education. Yeah, I can't touch them. You know, what would have made the egg cost sixty cents more. Yeah. I wonder what, yeah, what would have, um, what the Democrats, you know, saying Medicare for all and just flatly, yeah. Liam, in fact, you even gave them a few episodes ago. You even gave them the headline for the legislation, just Medicare for all that would immediately save every, save like every American on average, like hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. I, I, I,
Yeah, it was my dad's idea when he was arguing with Glenn Beck on Fox News when Obamacare went back. I made this show before, but I'm going to make it again. And my dad was like, I could do it in one sentence. The United States of America hereby adopts universal health care and empowers or delegates the Secretary of Health and Human Services to implement the same. Don, one sentence. We have universal health care. That's one, that's one page. Yeah.
Yeah, give my dad Secretary of Health and Human Services. Yeah, Donnie. Donnie, I know you're a big fan.
Take back whatever I've said about you or whatever. Give my dad HHS Because they're you know they want to put RFK into something and he's gonna Oh my gosh, I was gonna show us all dude. I'll enjoy my cholera But what I'm excited about is he does want to ban chemtrails That's gonna be good. That's gonna be good for the railroad industry because we just won't be able to fly planes anymore. Yeah
Yeah, I look forward to that. Yeah, that'd be good. I just every time I think about the election, I think about a new way in which all of us are fucked. And I haven't run out yet. It's been a new one every time. So I just, I don't know what to tell you. I don't know what to say. I- But risky, bi-strew-waffles, consumer. My gun! Like, fucking, yeah.
If you live in the United States, you can do it legally. If you feel like you can do it safely. I think it's something I would do if I lived in the US. Like, no question. I wouldn't hesitate about it. Because shit's going to get like as bad as it is now. It's going to get so much worse. Yeah, I was about to say we need a we need a liberal Waco.
Talking of changing climates and mass water. Yes, that's about to say. Let's go to the other side of the world.
So in, in Saudi Arabia, they're putting up Panama Canal numbers more than Panama Canal numbers. This makes Panama Canal look like, you know, sort of, you know, kids like, yeah, yeah, like white sea canal numbers, you know, exactly. A hundred twenty one thousand people dead are missing. Twenty one thousand dead over one hundred thousand missing. Jesus.
putting together Neom and the line and so on and so forth. And missing in this case, presumably, just means like buried alive in trench or something. Yeah, I'm really confused at how you can put up those numbers with modern construction techniques. Yeah, me too. You actively have to like be a couple of guys to death every shift. Those are visible from space numbers. Like, like, I, I, yeah, so
It's funny, because I recently was working in a company and I joined the company and then realized that that company, oh, it's sister. It's sister. Everyone knows it's sister. I was working with sister. And sister were working on neon. And I come in and they're working on neon. And I was like, why are we working on what?
And the people at the top genuinely convinced themselves like, you know, obviously they're, you know, they're working practice and stuff, but we can change it from the inside. Like, what the fuck are you talking about? Why do you think that? Have you ever met him? Do you know what he's like? MBS left, you know?
like that so yeah so so while i was in the brief time that i was a sister i was basically going we're we should not bid for this is extremely high risk we should not best for this just listing of all the new stuff that we were trying to get him with partly because all engineering consults in the uk being driven insane by the fact there isn't any work here so they start doing that stuff like
Like, what crazy ship monies can we go for instead? It's like one of the places that is building stuff and it's a short list, you know? Yeah, it's a giant. It's an extremely long ditch that is, I hope, not going to be much more, but they've killed 121. They've, sorry, killed or lost 121,000 Nepalese, Indian. Thank you, Dashi. Thank you, Dashi.
Yeah. People who come into the country have their passports confiscated, have absolutely, it's essentially indentured servitude and have pretty grim working conditions and send a bit of money back to their families. And then apparently, don't even get recorded as dying. You become lost. And then the kingdom of Saudi Arabia tends that you weren't and gets upset that the Western commentators are
are talking about you. Yeah, we have a hundred thousand different videos of these guys walking backwards out of the airport. So it's all good. You don't understand how it's like, what are they doing? Are they like trying to, you know, blast the several tunnels for this project entirely?
with like people with suicide. I don't, I don't understand how they're doing this factor of a million. Yeah. Are they? I mean, my feeling is like, if you, if you think that the, you know, design process for this is bad. Imagine what the likes of like works oversight for this is, you know, what do you think they're kind of like foreman for this look like? What do you think their managers like lining people up in front of the scraper? Maybe, you know, I don't understand.
Listen, I don't mean to be sort of like, I don't mean to brag, but I'm pretty certain if you put me in charge of a construction crew of a hundred people, I could find a way to kill all of them accidentally. You know what, Nova? I don't know if you could. I honestly do not know how you kill this many people without shooting half of them. I don't imagine how you managed that. I'm like a very junior Saudi prince's failed daughter.
and, like, okay, I don't have the same job. And I'm like, okay, now I need all of these guys to stand in front of the bulldozer just in case, you know, so it's about to say if you killed all those people by shooting them, that's adding a lot of ammo to the budget. And if you're expansive, because we're in Biden's America,
Not for long. Jesus. And it's going to be more expensive somehow. Yeah, probably will. This is appalling. So my call to, there are lots of engineers out there, lots of my fellow design engineers out there, but others as well, people in the UK right now.
If you're working on this and you're kind of like, well, you know, I was told to work on this job and like, I don't have a choice to say no, you can move to another project or you can threaten them with leaving. Say no, give your line manager the stories about this, the stories about the indigenous populations being murdered. You should not be working on this stuff. You have blood on your hands. If you work on this project, step away from it, call it out. Shout out to new civil engineer, which is like an incredibly middling sort of engineering business to business.
publication, but they've been going, they've been gunning for this. They've really pushed hard on like making a point of this and shaming some of the UK companies working on it, of which they're a long list. So Fair Play to New Civil Engineer magazine doing some proper genuine journalism that the big media companies just haven't been. They're actually calling out engineering consultants and engineering companies in the UK who have been working on this. Universities involved in this stuff. Stop it. They're abandoned KSA. Just because he has a lot of money does not mean that you should be sniffing his ass. Get out of there.
Yeah, this is a bad project, folks. You know, my concentration at Drexel was in construction management. And the one thing they drilled into us at Drexel, which is otherwise, you know, I don't think they were very good at engineering ethics there. Every worker has the right to leave the job site uninjured. Yep.
And here in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, apparently they've managed to install some kind of Rube Goldberg machine that they just toss all the workers in. And instead of that, it's a really big number.
Yeah. Yeah. It's in return for in return for what? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It's for bullshit. Yeah. It can't be a very efficient site. No. Just go back to the Seamus episode for people. God, it's a while back now. Absolutely. Tore to force that Seamus episode. If you want to understand what these projects are, why they exist and how fucking stupid they are, that episode, I'm sure everyone listens to this house because it's a brilliant episode. But if you haven't, go back to the episode to understand what the hell is going on with these projects.
But like this is, it cannot be stressed enough that these are, these are planet killing projects. They serve no useful function. There are like maybe two projects as part of vision, as vision 2030 that are useful, which are railway projects, dedicated railway projects that have nothing to do with neon. But like the majority of the 2030 stuff is shit like this. It's like 500 meter high mirror stuff that is just planet killing projects that we shouldn't be progressing like.
No one on the planet should be letting him be a builder. So sorry, I'm getting angry and elevated about this stuff. But this is like a typical situation where my fellow engineers, we don't, we're not taught ethics. And this is the fucking result. This is the result is that by is that British engineers, shit, tons of them are working on this stuff are going out to Saudi and doing this, you know, are working on this stuff as site engineers as consulting engineers. Why are you doing this? Stop it. The money is not worth it. You have hands, you have blood on your hands.
It's like the only situation in history that this feels comparable to in terms of like the churn rate, feels like French Sandoming, now Haiti, where they did just run through slaves at an incredible rate, because they just considered people completely disposable. This is ugly. This is ugly to comprehend. It's a lot of that around.
Well, let's blow something up. I was about to say that was the goddamn news.
Give me one second. I got to get a backup beer. We continue. Yeah. Well, listen, it was always going to take a minute to talk about how the bad things happened. Yeah. I can't stress enough how much I'm not an authority on any of this. I just know that it sucks. I don't have a prescription for it or anything.
I don't get mad at me, because I don't know either. I don't know anything other than that. I feel that in my gut. I'm back. Liberal delusion, liberal complacency. Those are the words that just come to mind. We're on the left of doomed to remember, right? It's like, if you do nothing and people get poorer, well...
Anyway, we've been there. We've been there. We've done that. Let's, let's talk about explosions and what, well, once Ross comes back with beer, when we get to go, let's do this. I'm going to get a beer actually. It's a good idea. Yeah. Okay. Do we wait a bit more then? Yeah. Yeah. One second. Okay. No, there we go. Cool. Okay. What is propane? We're on organic chemistry again. Yeah.
I was about to say, yeah, a lot of organic chemistry this season. Yeah, propane, three carbons, eight hydrogens. That's propane. It's a really nice, good, clean, burning fuel. Now, propane, as sold to consumers, is a type of liquefied petroleum gas. Right. It's a mixture of propane, a small amount of propylene, and some other trace gases. Some other fun stuff. Yes.
So to make a smell so that you can solve free stuff, so you actually smell if it leaks a little bit of stuff like that.
Um, liquefied petroleum gas can also include butane and other chemicals, but commercial propane is 90% propane. And then the stuff you use in like a propane grill, that's like 95% propane. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Um, so propane is gaseous at room temperature. And so therefore they liquefy it, uh, by cooling it down, uh, and they store it in pressurized tanks.
which you can then purchase and take home with you for your propane grill. Yeah. Have a liquefied pressurized gas that you can use to cook meat on. Exactly. Exactly. It's reasonably safe. It's reasonably clean. It's reasonably convenient. It's a very like Hank Hill type of film. Yeah. You don't have to. You don't have to clean out the grill afterwards. I'm a charcoal guy. I'm just I prefer charcoal.
I like to taste the meat and the heat. I think I've got like three almost finished cans of propane upstairs when I go camping. Those are now like haven't been used for like 12 years, so they're probably ready to just explode upstairs. That's fine. That's good. That's good. They probably either that they've all leaked out by now.
Well, that's also, yeah, they're sat next to the plastic cup of all BR track detonators. They're also explosive. That's a good idea. Yeah. We're going to take this number one, baby. Yeah, we have different parts of the thing. Like Rosie, you have the nuclear bomb in the basement. That's not right. And Gareth, you have the explosives in the attic. So it's, you know, yeah, there's a symmetry to it. Hmm. One inherent. Shameless. Huh? What? Shameless. And I was going to say, get the fertilizer, but yeah.
One inherent issue that sets propane and other liquefied petroleum gases apart from, say, natural gas, or like fuel oils, is that propane is a dense gas. If the cylinder springs a leak for some reason, the gas will flow out of the tank and it will pool on the ground instead of dispersing into the air. So you don't blow up your house if you have a leaky propane kind of stuff. Maybe.
Oh, I open some windows. So that's why you should store propane outdoors in a cage. Then if you blow it up, it's the grounds problem. Yeah. Then it then if there is a leak, it's dispersed by the wind. That's why you usually stored in like a big cage with like individual cylinders or if you're trying this down, I'm just writing this down and I'm thinking about my like calyx upstairs is full of propane kind of outside.
Yeah. Page. Okay. Yes. Keep going. If you need a bunch, you have a dedicated tank, which is also outdoors designed to vent to atmosphere. Vent to atmosphere. Okay. Cool. Yes. Throwoff valve. Yes.
So propane is also odorized, so you'll be able to smell the leak and know that when you smell it, it's time to get out of the area. Propane has many commercial uses for fuel for vehicles or for industrial equipment. A lot of forklifts run off of propane, I want to say. It can also be used as an aerosol propellant.
There's a lot of newer heat exchangers or heat pumps that use it as a refrigerant because it's more environmentally friendly than chlorofluorocarbons and also works a lot better. And of course, another aspect where propane is used is in commercial kitchens, especially those that are like off of a natural gas distribution system. You know, it's a lot.
It's a lot more convenient to transport propane than compressed natural gas. Propane's like 320 psi or so. Compressed natural gas is like 2400 psi, I want to say. He's a much more robust container. You're running like massive gas burning like stovetops off of it, you know? Yeah, exactly.
Now, in this presentation, just because of the sources I use, we're going to refer to propane and liquefied petroleum gas interchangeably. I should mention the big source I used for this was disaster in aisle 13. It's a report on sort of the emergency response to this incident more than it is about the actual incident that's available on Internet Archive.
You would hate to hear disaster on aisle 13 over the like Tanoy at a supermarket. Exactly. Yeah, that's pretty bad. They don't even use a code, you know. Yeah, a quick shout out to this. It's not episode where someone who, one of the sources that you use, Ross, came into the comments and was like, oh, that's, that's me. I wrote that. So it's like that guy. Hi. Yeah.
What is a state fair? And why does it need a Colosseum? I can answer this to the medium of stationary. Are we familiar with the hipster stationary brand field notes? Yes. Are we aware that they did? Do you like them, Justin? They're a little like kind of like two staple like cardboard notebook thing.
It has like a pretense of being unpretentious. It's meant to be like a farmer's almanac or whatever, or like something you would use for like, you know, engineering maybe. And so they do a lot of like special editions. And I had a box set of one per state in like different colors with a little like, you know, sort of gold foil thing with some fun facts about the state. So I, you know, this is, you know, the California notebook out of the box set.
and it's all the stuff that California exports or whatever. And I used these for years and years and years. And so because of this, I not only know state capitals, but I also know what a state fair is. And a state fair is where you go to a location in the state and you look at a cow made of butter, or you look at the best pig from this state. Or you see some sea butter made of cows.
Yeah, you can you can see some like I ever taken you to the farm show. I have not been to the farm show. I'll take you to the farm show. I'll take you to the farm show. I'll take you to the farm show. Yeah. So my understanding of it is you and whoever is running for president, if it's a swing state and an election year, go to this place. You see some cultural activities. You consume some very strange, very like high fat and carbohydrate foods. Yes. The first milkshakes you've ever had.
Uh-huh and then and then you maybe got drunk and you guys with my milkshake. Oh Yeah, actually these milkshakes might but yeah, that's a good point He's mad at me cuz I tripped over him in the kitchen yesterday. Oh, you're a cake milkshake like the Jesus Christ. Yeah, chill for us for 1000 years
Yeah. So, you know, this is a great place you could show off your biggest livestock, your giant vegetables, your enormous fruits. Eventually, there's side shows and attractions that show up. You can go on a Ferris wheel. You go on some kind of fold up dark ride, little tiny roller coaster. Mary, go around the infamous zipper. I wonder if it's possible to do a kind of night tour situation and go to every state fair in like the same year.
Oh my god. I think they're all roughly in the same season as the issue. Yeah, you'd have to do a lot of traveling and like some of them like Hawaii and Alaska would like fuck you up in terms of like the travel. But yes, I wonder. You also have shows or events you might have horse racing or a concert or.
auto racing. You can just say Indiana. Yeah. Demo derbies demolition derby demolition derby of many bands. Demolition derby. But with pickup trucks, monster trucks, demolition derby. But with they usually have a lot of demolition derbies. You might have a tractor pull to.
Oh, I love a tractor ball. Yeah. Yeah. Many, many redneck things. Hey, they're all very exciting and fun. A fun. Yes. Yeah. Oh, I'll do, I'll do a Republican voter outreach. It'll just be me at the demo derby with like a, like a 10 foot, like idle of Joe Biden on my car. Oh, you have the, you have the Kamala Harris car at the Demolition Derby. It's painted Brat Green. Yes. You get the most neck injuries or someone's ever had at one of these.
But I'm so Julia. Yeah, you want, you want it like that? Like it's exhausting. It's it's the problem is it's a banger, but now it's indelibly tainted by association. You want to be like,
She could have been legendary. She could have had like a rain of power to totally restructure the U.S. But like, you know, the hubris and tying herself to the thing made it like really, really tainted. And ultimately she lost out on power and an emerges that I'm talking about, Charlie Axiax. You'd wind up like that guy, the pro wrestler guy when as a heel, the progressive liberal where people forgot it was a bit.
Yeah, I would not. I don't know. See, I see in the Harris waltz car at the Demolition Derby would be very funny. Oh, yeah. Crushed into a cube instantly. Yeah. Lots of horrible, delicious fried foods. Yeah. Go to the state fair. It's a good time at the Indiana state fair in particular. You can visit the Midway. You can see automobile racing. They got a racetrack because, you know, it's Indiana.
The Indianapolis 500 is not so far off. You'll say they do 500, but you don't see the, the local four H show off their livestock. You can see high school marching bands and competitions. Yeah. There's also a hot air balloon race. How do you rate a hat? What?
I assume that I have an old person to get veggie near the county where the finish line is wins. That's bullshit. No, this should be. You just have to do this like a jaydam for first for the first time in history, the Indiana State Fair balloon race has been won by the People's Republic of China.
And piloted by balloon boy. Remember that? Oh, God. Yeah. In the past, there were such exciting events as Velasapides. Yes. Oh, yeah. Horse diving. That's so bad for the horse. They don't like it. No. It feels cruel. And, of course, they had a eugenics event.
I mean, it's a logical progression in the sense that you have a bunch of like sort of planters and like ranches going, yeah, this is the best cow we bred in the state this year. And I am very racist by his transitive property. This is the best baby we bred in the state this year. Yeah.
We have moved past such things as Velocipadestrianism and eugenics.
So let's let's talk about the Indiana State Fair Coliseum. Why is Garfield in this? Oh, that's why Garfield is in this in a second. I'm glad because that was a series of questions about why is the ticket booth so ornate? Because this was a works progress administration construction. Uh huh. Yeah.
This this was actually renamed to Cortiva Colosseum. Today. Today. Yeah. The fuck is a court. It's some kind of big agribusiness. Of course it is. Yeah. Before that. The Monsanto farmers Colosseum. Yeah. OK, yeah.
Before that, it was the Indiana farmers Colosseum. And before that, it was the Pepsi Colosseum. Yeah, I see what it's going. You hate to see a kind of small local producer, like Pepsi bought out by Leviathan, like Indiana farmers. Yeah.
So it's funny. So there's a thing every year called the the Royal Wealth Show. Like the UK has like farmer shows that I kind of had lots of elements of this, but without some of the Americana. A lot cheaper. Much cheaper. Yeah. And I suppose this is the parallel of like the fact the Royal Wealth show happens every year. It's in the same place. It has permanent structures. So lots of it's like tents and temporary stuff. But you for the thing that you know, you need to have lots of people seated in every year. You might as well build a permanent thing that does that, right? Which I guess is what
This is, right? It could be a tent, but actually by the time you've built an enormous bloody tent with all the seats once a year, just build a permanent structure, right? Yeah, it comes in useful in the off season for miscellaneous plus. I mean, this isn't really a coliseum. It's like a medium museum, but like... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But yeah, so Indiana Farmers Coliseum named after the Indiana Farmers Mutual Insurance Company who uses Garfield as its mascot. The legal? I bet they paid like $5 in like 1932 for it and they've just written off the back of it since.
Now, why do they use Garfield as a mass field? Why? Yeah, that's a good question. Why did they? Because Garfield lives in Indiana. No, no, he did that. That that that can't be true. I refuse to accept Garfield. You're not telling me that Garfield is an Indianaan.
No, Garfield lives in Indiana. I'm not. No, prove it. Where's this? Show us the long form birth certificate in Muncie. I just, there's also a kind of elements of like a kind of John Grisham or James Elroy thing here where it's like the Indiana farmers mutual insurance company is that they'll kill you in the sense that that's like a like a probably
like a multi-billion dollar corporation somehow. It's just like ostensibly and like, you know, grew out of like two guys in dungarees being like, bury my money in this barn. But like now is like this kind of terrifying thing that has like tendrils all over the world that extends from Indianapolis and is now like having a guy beaten to death in a back alley in Kowloon somehow, you know?
So yeah, they actually have a big, uh, Garfield mascot who hangs out in the stadium. I don't like that at all. Yeah. The mask of capital is a Garfield face, you know, the creator of Garfield, uh, is a resident of isn't he's an Indiana native. He's from biotech. Yeah. It's from Marion. I mean, I mean, like, I know the guy is insane. So sorry. So sorry. I was starting to worry that was something like wrong with cartoonists. Even more, even more. So sorry, Jim Davis, as far as I know, it's normal.
The only one we can trust is Heath Cliff. I mean, he did drink. He did draw John drawing.com that one time. So, you know, maybe not that normal. That's that's that's that's a good that's a good Garfield right there.
We can, we can find that dev. If you just Google, but don't Google Garfield.com, but like find it. Yeah. So there's a lot of Garfield's out there that are kind of mediocre. That one's a good one. I, the thing is, I find Garfield very, very germane to like the kind of absurdism of putting like Garfield out of order or Garfield without Garfield. So it's just John talking to himself.
Or my favorite was the one that there's a panel. There's one panel of Garfield where Garfield is being flung upside down, T-posed out of a window. And if you tag that on as the third panel of any Garfield comic, it's still funny.
So, yeah, this is the Corteva Colosseum, I guess, again, as of today. Uh-huh. It kind of looks like Old Boston Garden. I like it a lot. This is very handsome building. It does, yeah. Yeah. He's nice, yeah. Remind you of, um, this is some shit from Tropico, kind of, which I, you know, big fan.
It's also, I really like the ticket windows here. I assume these have been boarded up because they put HVAC back there or something, but they got like, you know, the grading is all corn stuff. Yes. Beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. Of course it's corn stuff. Yeah. Oh, that is nice. I'd like a little detail. Oh, yeah.
Well, it's interesting, the works progress administration sort of invented a new order of columns where the capital- It was like, functionally they were an ancient Greek city-state for like a week, you know? Yeah, exactly. Where the capital is like a corn stock as opposed to, you know, the ancient Greek, whatever. I forgot to- Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. I don't know. The American, I mean, fuck, I feel a little bit like patriotic by proxy. That's cool. Yeah.
Yeah, so this is a multi-purpose arena. It could be set up for ice hockey, basketball. It could be set up for concerts. Again, this is built by the Works Progress Administration in 1939 to replace the 1907 livestock pavilion.
It formerly was the host of the Indiana Pacers. And no less than seven ice hockey teams. None of which were in the show. They sure are trying doing doing ice hockey in Indiana angers gods. I think this is clear at this point to anyone to everyone except Indiana's. It's a lot better than doing it in Las Vegas. Fuck the nights, dude. Yeah.
Um, 6,800 seats when configured for basketball, 6,200 for ice hockey. Um, you know, today it's just not big or modern enough for professional athletics. They all moved downtown to the game bridge fieldhouse. Um, they still use it for smaller events and concerts and like high school sports and stuff like that. Uh, they hosted the Beatles in 1964. Wow. Huh? Yeah. So the recording for it was just solid screaming as every Beatles live at recording was. Mm hmm.
Yeah. So this is a pretty nice venue in my opinion. Now we have to talk about fire inspections. I desire this car. Yeah. Let me drive this around. Listen,
Okay. Everybody got mad at me, right? I got a new compromise thing that's going to make only 70% of the people mad at me. Let me be a fire marshal. You get the car. They, I think they give you a gun. You definitely have a badge. That's like most of the way, like a car. Good, right? Yeah. I think so. Fire police and PA. I don't think any firearms.
The guy, our friend here on the right of the field seems to be enjoying it as well. He seems to be puckering at the fire marshal vehicle. He seems to be pleased. Yeah, exactly. It was that white arm. No, it's gorgeous. Gorgeous. Yeah. So.
For any building, it's like a large venue. Fire inspections are important and ought to be conducted regularly. Yeah, by a guy with the coolest possible of a car. Yes. These inspections are the purview of the fire marshal. During these inspections, of course, you're looking for anything that might cause a fire, or which may impede evacuation if a fire were to occur. Like, you know, a whole bunch of crap stored in the stairwell, a bunch of emergency exits. Yeah, padlock doors, improperly stored flammables or whatever, right?
Now, fire inspections are important, but they only work if you actually have the manpower and the wherewithal to do them. One of the first things that any fire department facing budget pressures cuts. Yeah. Yeah, this stuff. Yeah, exactly.
In Indianapolis in 1963, there was a problem with both of these. The Indianapolis Fire Department had shortened the work week from 70 hours to a leisurely 63 hours. Oh, God. Oh, those crazy tricks. Yeah. They read, you know, they read the thing about eight hours for work, eight hours for leisure, another eight hours for leisure.
Yeah, exactly. That's that's that's that's basically how much the French work. This resulted in the shortage of manpower. Fire police do not carry weapons. Sorry, that took me so long. It's still a cool job ties, although. Yeah, they're basically just glorified traffic cops, but they they what's what's what's the car look like? I mean, Google this right quick.
It's yeah, I mean, I think it's municipal base, but they're there are some that are like pretty sick fire police car I'm just seeing a lot of police cars on fire. Yeah, do fire police car fire police Pennsylvania. Oh, that's pretty sick a bunch of like old like 90s SUVs like a disaster movie. Okay, that's sick. Oh, nice. Okay. Yeah, that's nice fun. You just know that in the UK. It's a hatchback Astra
A 1990 suburban that you have to drive for work incredible fuck the climate. This rules. It doesn't different, baby. No, no, someone's going to have to send this to Devon so they can put it up on the screen. All right. I'm not going to remember to do that. No, no, we're not going to remember. She's so tired, Ross.
Uh, now, furthermore, the fire chief in Indianapolis believed that because the Colosseum was state-owned property, it was outside of his jurisdiction, even though it was inside the city limits. You got to have some kind of state fire, Marshall, you know? Yes. Thus, the inspections were rare and only cursory. Usually, they just inspected it right before the state fair, even though the Colosseum was leased to promoters and held events throughout the year. Uh huh.
Now, you might ask, OK, what's the risk of fire in a fireproof coliseum? And you can't burn down a coliseum. I haven't seen gladiator two yet. So I assume it's all it's all made up brick and like concrete and, you know, metal, you know, right? It's ice hockey. You've got ice in there with ice ice. I'm just going to catch fire.
I don't like that. Oh, right. I say, if you like, I'm stopping. I'm not going to fire in in the Colosseum, of course, they serve concessions. Yeah. Well, no sessions need to be heated.
It's just just a shitload of burning corn dogs. Yeah, this is about this is about I want to say four miles north of the city center. There's no municipal gas line out here. So the heat comes from propane, which needs to be stored. Where's there a lot of room for storage in a Colosseum? The basement. The seats. Oh, yeah.
Oh, now do you see a problem that may develop here? Because I'm not. I'm not. I'm deliberately not. I'm looking at the corn dog. I'm thinking about a corn dog's going to taste and I'm just not thinking about it. So for everyone, anyone who uses the Asta in Adel in North Leeds, there's a space underneath that Asta that's called by the staff called the void because when they built the Asta, they built the Asta was, you know, it's basically a giant warehouse. They built it flat, but it was built on a plot that was on a slight slope.
And the void, the bit that you could actually access without stooping had lights. It was kind of like basically fine. They use it for storing stuff, but they also saw stuff in the void, which was the bit where you open a door, go in, there were no lights and it disappeared off into infinity. You can't call it that. You can't be like, Hey, can you store this bag of like crisps or whatever? And then this is this pallet in the void.
That is literally what they did, yes. And what I love is there could be anything in there since that thing was built in presumably the late 90s. So yeah, so if you're using the answer at all, just be aware that you might be stood on above anything. And it could be flammable. It could be, yeah, who knows? So yeah. Have been adored by this information.
So, you know, there's a problem that may develop here. We'll talk about here the commissary, which is located under aisle 13. Oh, I'm just going to read the caption here. This is an artist's conception of the approximate dispositions of materials in the concession commissary at the Colosseum. According to an eyewitness, a radiant heat device or one.
fired by propane gas was used to heat pre popped popcorn in a storage bin. Not the popcorn heater. In your mind, you're supposed to serve, man, not betray him to serve. In your mind, take.
Feeling like emotionally like the popcorn heater has betrayed its purpose. I don't know why I just immediately my mind just put you into a berry and you're just dressing down like sergeants are dressing down. It's like sheepish looking popcorn machine. That's the king.
Oh, dear, I must be delirious. Yep. Right there. We still hung over. A nearby tank of propane apparently became overheated and a safety valve was popped, causing the gas to flow from the valve and the tank to fall over. Oh, no, I don't like that. It's about a hundred pound tank of propane. Another five point five second rule. You pick it back up. It's all good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Another popcorn storage bin number three here was being warmed by an electric cone type heating element. That's right. OK, so as you're describing this, I noticed a little bit left for you to describe in this. I'm visualizing like six or seven different like kind of like weird.
eating instructions of varying types and sizes. This is the propane popcorn. This is the electric popcorn.
I believe that like there was there was a point in the Pennsylvania State Affairs history where you could have got like anthracite popcorn. I believe this Pennsylvania dominance. I mean coal fired pizza is still a thing that's single handedly holding up the Pennsylvania anthracite industry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Also still some home heating.
So all these things are wiggling and jiggling and falling over in this void underneath the seats at aisle 13. Yeah. What's really funny about this is this disaster happened on Halloween and we didn't do it for the Halloween episode.
Yeah, why is your Halloween costume motion? This is on October 31st. It's maybe not in order here, but that's that's rough if you get like blown up and you're wearing a costume. You got to go to the hospital and they're like, you know, trying to reattach your army wearing a Dracula cape, you know.
Sometime shortly before the events we are about to describe a manager open the door to the commissary saw a thick fog inside closed the door in the employees to get out. I'll just put this over here with the rest of the propane. One man went in to try to stop the leak failed miserably. I don't know what happened to him. I'm going to be honest.
I have a guess. I have a guess. That's rough. I mean, fucking trying to do the Chernobyl reactor divership, but you're one Indiana man. You've got fireworks, but it's popcorn exploding around you. Just give that man the Indiana Medal of Honor. He went into the gap of danger in the popcorn reactor.
this reactor on the board. People are using the popcorn reactor vessel. What is this if not a pressure vessel to contain popcorn reaction? You have to dip the control rods in, but they're corn dogs. Not granted, the pressure differential is one to one, but it's a pressure vessel for containing popcorn reactions.
Oh, yeah. So now you may ask, OK, why are these things running at all? What's the event? It's not the state fair. It's a separate event, which the Colosseum was rented out for. It was, of course, the performance of Holiday on Ice. Oh, no. No, this sounds like it sucks. No. Well, it's got to suck a little more, Nova.
This is a very long running show. This is what you get for doing Christmas before Thanksgiving. It's not even Christmas themed as the interesting part of the holiday. Yeah. No, they, they, they do like it's like non-denominational holiday. Yeah, that's always a weirdly enough. Yeah, I believe I think they have done a Kwanza theme show. Yeah. I am.
I'm not super familiar with the ice show scene, but I believe this was actually the first one and it is still running to this day. I went to say fucking Shenyan China before communism. All right.
But yeah, this is on October 31st, 1963. It's the first show of an 11 day run of holiday on ice. Now, this show starts little late, but not so late as to cause an uproar. It starts at 8.45 instead of 8.30. So the show was supposed to wrap up around 11.15 instead of 11 as scheduled. Charlie cheap plan at the front there. Yeah. Very good. There's a meeting boy moding standing next time.
Yeah, definitely put that picture up if you want. There's 4,327 spectators for opening night. Uh huh.
with the propane, slowly filling the commsock. And now, at 11.06, as the show is wrapping up. At 11.06, we pop the fuck out of some corn. We pop a more corn, more like to a greater extent than has ever previously been popped. The corn popped.
Oh my God. The corn pop heard round the world round the world. Yes. Yeah. Just as the finale began at aisle 13, there was enormous boom just underneath the box seats. A 700 square foot section of the seating and floor flew up into the air and came back down, smashing a load bearing wall below, which collapsed and took out another 500 square feet of floor with it. Jesus is like a mortar, like a trench mortar.
Yes. And amongst all of it is just gallons of half cooked popcorn. Yes. Raining body parts and corn dogs. Yeah. Geez. It took a moment for anyone to figure out what had happened. Many of the people who were not directly viewing the exploded stands thought that since there had been small pirate techniques as part of the performance, maybe this was actually part of the show.
Until I looked and saw the destroyed stance. People sat there with their hair, like, comedically, like, Goths, like, stretched to one side with, like, the comedy, like, Daffy Duck beat spun around the back of the head. Go in. Go in. Jeez, was that part of the show? Yeah. Bloody hell.
It was so clear. There was a horrible accident. People were strewn across the ice. They were crushed under big concrete blocks. They were mangled in a big pit of debris. It was very ugly to behold. This is also a family show, right? Yes. Very much. Very much so.
Now, just like this, there was generally- Could it not have been, I asked this rhetorically to God? Could it not have been a show that was like, you know, for unlikable losers, right? Like people that you wouldn't miss, like anonymous showing up, you know?
Why is it always when the roof comes in? Why is it always the, like, the, like, the completely blameless, like, uh, you know, here's, here's a benefit we did for the local kids. Why is it net? Why does this never happen to the letting agents national convention? November, November, only the good day young. Yeah.
I mean, you joke about that, but the number of train crashes, the number of formative train crashes in the UK that involve like a holiday train full of children is actually notable. It's not to say, it's not to say, you know, you see that big train full. Give this one to our drunkest driver.
Yeah, exactly. It's like, yeah, yeah, this train is full of nuns and orphans. Let's give it to drunk Uncle Bob. That's my Uncle Bob. Oh, yeah. We miss him every day. So anyway, despite this huge explosion, by and large, there's an aura of calm in the auditorium, right, or in the in the Colosseum.
The holiday on ice band, in fact, keeps playing to keep everyone calm. Oh, my God, to the start to evacuate in an orderly fashion. On a I was the second explosion happens.
Oh, no, Mr. President. Yes. Second, a second popcorn reactor has struck the Iowa State Coliseum. This time there was a 40 foot fireball contained entirely within the Coliseum. They wait. This was October, 1963.
Yes. They would have had to tell Kennedy about this. And Kennedy was like, damn, that's crazy. By the way, everything's still good for me to go to Dallas next month, right? Surprising how often that comes up in this podcast.
Yeah, right? Like, I don't know. It's like 9-11, right? I can relate to it because I know the date of the Kennedy assassination because the Stephen King book I can relate stuff from logically to it. Happy birthday, by the way, the president's been shot. That apparently is how it went. Yes. Jesus.
thought the debris with many trapped underneath was now also on fire. Just like trapped under concrete block. Like, well, this can't get any worse. The concrete block is now on fire on fire. Yes. Lots of people were buried underneath concrete slabs weighing five to 10 tons.
You're not, you're not walking that off again. Again, why can this never happen to like a Trump rally, you know? Cause there's never enough of them there. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be embarrassing if like an empty section. Why does, why, why, why this and why not Trump on ice or I guess 1963 equivalent. So George Wallace on ice. Yeah. Oh God. Doing a long spin. Just out there saying the word.
singing the word, actually.
a beautiful control service. I don't want to. I don't want to run it. It's like it's really technically impressive. This. Now, this fire dies down pretty quickly because it is being fueled by the propane, which, you know, sort of disperses, right? Yeah, it did. But it does burn a lot of people. At least it burns off clean, you know, odorless, you know, like, you know, given the charcoal set, I was going to be a lot of this. I was just getting here.
hope you're not wearing polyester. Oh, it's the sixties. Everyone's wearing polyester. Oh, yeah, you are going up like a like a Christmas tree. So it's very apparent pretty early on that a lot of people are dead or injured, right? An off duty firefighter called the Indianapolis Fire Department within minutes of the explosion, saying there are probably 50 to 100 people injured in this in his estimation.
police were on the scene by 1115, shortly followed by the media and only then by the fire department. The budget cuts again. Yeah. That's 63 hour work week really cutting into response times. The American Red Cross and the Salvation Army also dispatched personnel. Civil defense arrived on the scene. If I'm dying in this fucking Salvation Army or trying to save me, let me die. Put me back in. Put me back in.
But you put that concrete block back on top of me. More weight.
yet civil defense, you know, countless other rescue and relief organizations just they hear about this and they sent everything they can, right? Oh, dear. Yeah. What resulted was the enormous traffic jam of emergency equipment, incidents, command management. Yes, is a skill.
gold silver bronze. It's actually very important to manage this stuff extremely carefully. In fact, you can sort of see this in this picture. This is inside the auditorium. You can see a lot of ambulances. You can see a tow truck here. You can see probably a police car over here that's sort of blocking a way out. A lot of people milling around like no clear function. Yeah, it's just like, damn, look at that.
Yeah, that's an aftermath type job. That's what the NTSB or like, you know, the accident investigation board do, you know? So it's a situation. I, okay. It's easy for me to post more on this. I would not be bringing vehicles in here. I would be getting people, I'd be human training people in and out so that you have clear working space because also you're doing all the excavation of material and yeah.
Um, starting when race is the Colosseum. I mean, the first and biggest problem was the police, right? Oh, yeah. They had more officers on duty than normal because it was Halloween, right? All the kids are getting into mischief. Yeah. People are putting fentanyl in the 60s counties. Exactly. Those kids deserve it.
Guys, it was like, what was the 1960s drug choice? Quailudes, bud. Quailudes in my 1960s candy and poisoning a bunch of racist children. Yeah. Oh, no. What's the one? What's the one that gave all the nasty birth defects?
Um, so of course they, they rush the Colosseum and they park all their squad cars at the sort of John T. Angle, typical of Belize. Yeah. It's, it's one of the most like offensive things just to be like, I'm parked at like a 70 degree angle across like three handicapped spaces and a bike lane. Um, I'm going to leave it parked there for four and a half hours. Yeah. This blocked access for everyone else.
Yeah, you'll get nothing like it.
Of those vehicles in personnel, of those vehicles in personnel that made it to the scene, there was very little that could be done for anyone with the most accessible victims. One of the more satisfying videos I've seen on YouTube is an FDNY engine physically moving an NYPD car that was blocking it out of the way. I'm just sort of like idly crushing it and pushing it aside. You piece of shit. Get out of my way.
Um, the debris was of course too heavy to lift by hand. So police radioed for tow trucks and mobile cranes and the tow truck showed up a whole shitload of them and they were of no use. They needed to lift the debris, not drag it around it potentially. Yeah, dragging the like six ton concrete block off my legs, just smearing the whole like low half of my body across the ice. About to say you get turned into an uncooked smash burger.
Yeah. Finally, by 1135, police from neighboring Speedway. I don't know if you could call Speedway a neighboring municipality. It's entirely surrounded by Indianapolis. You know, they managed to locate and borrow a mobile crane, which was then given the world's slowest police escort to the site of the disaster, arriving at 1250 AM. And then it got stuck in the traffic jam.
Of course. So we're nearly two hours. Correct me if I'm rolling the timeline. We're nearly two hours now after the event, right? Two hours after the event, the mobile crane makes it there. Here it is over here. It's on tracks because it's 1963. It's not one of the new ones that can go fast.
Um, course. Yeah. Um, the coroner of Marion County arrived at 11 45 p.m. Right. He managed to fight his way through the ambulances and fire trucks and heavy equipment, civil defense vehicles, salvation, army, canteen trucks, so on and so forth. Ice cream vans. He's like, he's like punching his way through chaplains, like the opening of airplane. Yeah. I provide important pastoral care to the pal.
I was thinking of a separate scene from Airplane where they dispatch all the emergency vehicles and they have like the the air stairs. Oh, yeah. That's what's coming into the area here. Well, you knew the Indy five hundred dollars heavy rescue squad is a little tiny truck. It was when T like was trainer's night, actually. Oh, my gosh. This is on the ground. Oh, no.
They're tiny hats. Um, you know, he, when, when the coroner shows up, he is the first physician on scene. Jesus Christ to do like, is there a doctor in the house? And it's two hours later. Yeah. Sorry. I'm drinking. Oh, no, it's only 1145. Okay. He's there. The crane hasn't arrived yet. Constance. So 45 minutes is still pretty bad though. Like,
He is died by that point who would have not otherwise. He's the first doing, but triage, you know, it'd be like dead, dead, dead, almost dead, almost dead. Well, he's he's he's too overworked to triage. The only thing he can do is give like the trapped victims who are not yet dead some comfort in the form of lots of morphine. Yeah, that's true. I'll do it.
Um, you know, until like the crane showed up and additional, uh, um, physicians, um, you know, it wasn't until, uh, like 1250 when they could set up a makeshift morgue. Now conveniently they were on an ice rink. So, you know, well, that's convenient. You know, like a place to have it. Yeah. Exactly.
Um, at least one aspect of this was well planned by accident by accident. Yeah. So, you know, there, there's the, the makeshift Morgan foreground of this photo. Um, Jesus, you know, about 1150, the police chief of Indianapolis finally showed up to the scene, having also fought his way through other emergency vehicles, set up a command post to finally get all these various relief organizations.
Organized. Yeah, turns out that that's important. You can't just like throw things at the thing and hope it works itself out. Yeah. So we finally have some traffic control. All right. So here, here is the Colosseum here. Here is the adjacent building, which at the time was known as the cattle barn. Yeah. I was seeing a capital in it. Am I seeing a salvation army canteen directly in front of the site of the explosion?
Yes, they got in really early and started making coffee. Oh, that's nice of them. I have some suggestions for what they should do with it. I hate the fucking Salvation Army, and I wasn't expecting to come out of this episode with a second reason.
I'm so proud of you. They'll get you. Union busters, the hate gay people, they will take your unused surplus clothing though. I don't know. Cover up abuse scandals in the process. Yeah, they do that as well. All right. So there's this solid mass of a emergency vehicles blocking all routes in and out of the Coliseum. There's no coordination. So cool, dude.
There's no coordination between any relief organizations. The chief of police takes control, sets up an actual command post in the fair's administrative building. That's that's down here or over here.
depending on which of these images you're looking at. He ordered the fairgrounds sealed off until they could figure out what the hell was going on. Well, local relief organizations were still bombarding the site with ambulances, buses, fire trucks, wreckers. These things are piling up like it's like Blues Brothers. Yeah, they're standing. This is like a clange starter eye. This is like every fucking county just has a like volunteer fire service that it's just no coordination and it's just sending in more shit.
Yeah, the funeral homes are even sending in herses. There's dozens of cars full of volunteers from like civil defense from like, you know, they got a you got Red Cross and Salvation Army.
As to the funeral homes, a lot of them were ambulance services also at this point. In fact, the form of the ambulance evolved out of the hearse. They ran a few as so-called combination cars for a long time. That's convenient if you die en route. Yeah, exactly. It's changed the sign over. Yeah. Just a little roller, like in a bus, you just roll it from like a funeral for an ambulance in service.
Yeah, I believe the army was saturating the area with army ambulances. Oh my god. Oh my god. I've just finished. I like a van turns up in a bunch of mimes. Get out and start doing it. Army brackets salvation army brackets regular army brackets. Mime.
I think a big win for Colossal Order, the publishers of City's Skylines. You thought emergency vehicle traffic jams were fake? No, they're very real adult. This reminds me of a top-down video game I used to play. Do you remember the emergency series? I think they released those 911 first responders.
I love that game. I love that fucking game. Did never really got a proper sequel. I think there's like a free to play one now. But yeah, like large part of it is like there's a gap in the market for that kind of like incident command management RTS game, you know?
The local churches were sending priests and ministers in cars. Oh my God. I was joking about how to fly your way through a bunch of clergy, but like every denomination is represented. Yeah. It's about to say. Oh my God. We found a one, the, the, the one like Shinto guy. He's in the, he's bringing the little bell. Yeah.
Um, so the chief of police is like, okay, we just on the radio, like, if you've got the concrete blocks off the guys yet and some poor Indianapolis firefighter is like, no, but I did learn that the temple bells reflect the impermanence of all human life. So cheap. I got no attachments over here.
the chief of police at the command post, um, finally says, all right, here's what we're going to do. We're gonna have a triage in the cattle barn. Cattle barn is just a open space. It's not like full of like dirt on the floor and crap, but they do put cattle in there for the state fair, but it wasn't the state fair. So there's no cows in there.
You know, we're going to do that. We're going to move the police vehicles out of the arena and away from the area. We are going to have a one way loop for ambulances through the cattle barn to pick people up.
It's a good system and it's like actually a convenient site for it, you know? Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's indoors. It's enclosed because you can drive vehicles in and out of the building. I believe there were specific gates for the entrance and exit. You can draw a nice clean diagram of it too. Exactly. Yeah.
So I guess very quickly, in the Google Earth image you've got on screen rows, there's loads of car parking space. I'm guessing that wasn't necessarily quite as extensive then. It might have just been like open fields maybe. I do not think so, but I don't know.
I just think because like, yeah, if he's saying do it in the barn, I presume that was, it was covered. It was the right space to do that. Like, they didn't have all that big open concrete of tarmac. Because the thing I've been saying is, okay, all your vehicles, fuck off over there. You can go around and circle and say, okay, just leave. All of you go away and I will come for you if you're needed. If there's this bizarre, like, Blues Brothers kind of pile up going on with all, with all the lights, sorry. A lot of people turning up and the sirens go, woo, woo, woo. It's completely definite.
Um, they, they, yeah. So they moved the police cars out. They let the mobile crane into the arena finally after making the space for it so they could finally pick up these big concrete blocks. Uh, and they moved the Salvation Army canteen truck into the Colosseum for, you know, the coffee. I think they set up a grill as well. Uh huh. Cause I would not feel very hungry, but yeah, I just hope it's not a propane grub. Yeah. Yeah.
Um, but there's still further disorganization occurring, right? So while they're being bombarded with ambulances, no one's coordinating which hospital do we send? Oh my God.
There was some instruction. There's a vague idea. Okay, we're going to balance this between the hospitals. We're going to, you know, because there's a lot of hospitals available. Specifically, the Samaritan hospital was very well prepared to receive quite a lot of victims from this. Although no one was really prepared because no one thought to contact the hospitals beforehand. Hey, there's been an incident. Yeah. Oh, this is quality disaster response. Pick up the phone. Yeah.
It says the guy in one of the 50 cars that you have parked blocking the entrance. Yeah.
So most ambulance drivers just brought people to the nearest hospital, which was Presbyterian hospital, which was pretty full up and not really prepared to handle a lot of people. They got 120 victims while the Samaritan hospital, which was better prepared, only received 27. Okay. There were like eight more hospitals that got victims. And a lot of them were like just not prepared forward at all. You know, they only found out there was an emergency when, you know, there were,
50 ambulance showed up with traumatic and injuries. It's like 50 Dracula's have showed up in the. Yes. Covered in fake blood and real blood. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Then began the grim job of identifying the dead. The morgue was set up and they installed temporary rubber flooring, so as to prevent the friends and relatives of the deceased from slipping on the ice in the frozen pools of blood. Raising, raising hand. How many times do you think that happened before they put in the temporary rubber flooring? Good question. Just like how much of a shish or this has been. Yeah, like that's a whole lot. Multiple family members.
Kind of say, I imagine all the emergency workers are constantly slipping and falling. Yeah, exactly. I played Mario Kart. That's exactly how this went. Yeah. Ken, you got to have like the reverse Sam Boney come out and rough up the ice. Yeah. Oh, my God. It was Sam Boney backwards. Hold on. The Enobmas. Yeah. Send one of those out. Yeah, exactly.
Um, now the first, uh, the first people came in to, uh, identify the deceased around three o'clock in the morning by seven 30 in the morning. There was actually a line at the door, uh, from the amount of people who managed to force their personal vehicles through the American Sea vehicles. Oh my God. The tow trucks and at least there's like 500 different chaplains and ministers and shit to try and comfort them. Yeah, everyone's, uh, you know, there's like, uh, there's like 4,500 people there to give last rights.
Yeah. It's like many dead, but like none of them went to hell. Yeah. No, they went to the extra heaven. They got so many last rights bonus. That's how it works. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. So many sacraments. I got like this. The Catholicism bonus episode is coming. The secret, the secret sacraments.
Now, five propane tanks were discovered in the wreckage, belonging to the Midwest Gas Corporation. These were removed from the scene as evidence. But with caveats, we'll get to that in the next slide. By 4 p.m. the next day, all victims had been identified, save for two of them.
All survivors had been removed from the building. Emergency workers had all left save for a few state police guarding the site. By the way, there had been a jurisdictional conflict this whole time between the Indianapolis police and the state police as to who's running. Yeah.
Um, it was gradually handed over to the state police as the night wore on. Um, in the end, 81 people were dead and over 400 were injured. Jesus. Oh boy. And, uh, in the confusion, something strange had happened. Oh no. Did someone forget to do the ass in ass now? Like did someone forget to do the search and search and rescue? And that's just still like guys under the thing. No, someone was searching, but not for, not for the, uh, not for the victims.
The pinata dog. Several lawyers had managed to infiltrate the blast site mere minutes after it happened. I don't know how that phone call went. It's like an orbital dropped in like. Yeah. Yeah. We need you to drive it like 120 miles an hour in the shoulder past like a giant like a lady full of bumpers of bumper fire trucks and ambulances. Yeah.
and get in there and start suing people. The first people on the scene, the lawyers. I'm like a legal first responder. I'm like a legal observer at a protest. I've got like a fluorescent green hat, and I'm just like serving people. They're paralegals, yeah.
These lawyers come in, they clamber over the records, they ignore the dead, the injured and the dying, and went straight for the propane tanks and remove crucial parts, the valves and the hoses and so on and so forth. Oh my God. They would stop. I need Indiana cops to learn how to set up a cordon ever maybe. It's French for line. Yes.
They were stopped by the state police and they were rejected from the arena without the evidence that they tried to steal. But the damage had been done. You know, it's got like one loafer on a guy's head. The other one braced against the propane tank trying to pull the hose off of it.
The evidence had been thoroughly and completely tampered with. Good grief. Jesus. So these law, do we know, I'm not going to be about to shoot your Fox Ross, but like, do you know whose lawyers were these? Were these the sites lawyers? Um, I am not sure. Um, I had difficulty, uh, mysterious gang of lawyers. Well, they, they said they represented an Indianapolis law firm, which fairly obvious. I, I don't know who they were in the employee of. I didn't.
I unfortunately never quite gleaned that information. Shown the parishion mass. Yeah. Like rogue state lawyers just popping out of nowhere. It's a SWAT team. The police recovered the evidence. The tanks were sent to Purdue University for analysis. What do you know? The tanks had been stored next to a heat source. The gas inside expanded.
The safety valve did its job and vented the excess gas, a vast quantity of propane built up in the commissary, and exploded the box seats when it founded the ignition source. The National Liquid Petroleum Gas Association attempted to dispute this by saying, well, what if it was a steam leak or a carbon dioxide leak?
I mean, you don't really, that's a kind of commitment to like evil that you don't see in as many industry concerns outside of the like, you know, oil and gas industry these days. Like tobacco. And like, Hey, hey, hey, I'm Steelers.
In general, though, your average corporate lobbyist for the thing that kills people accidentally won't go as hard as this until it's in court, but like in public to be like, yeah, you know, maybe it's just fucking a diswamp gas. Yeah, exactly.
From like the letter they sent, it seemed like even they didn't really believe themselves, but you know, we have to send a letter to bunch of like propane valves falling out of my pockets. It's like, yeah, this could have been anything, you know, a grand jury was convened to assign blame. They indicted no less than seven individuals, the Indianapolis fire chief, the state fire marshal,
three individuals from the, uh, the gas distributor discount gas corporation would not buy my gas from them. Yeah, I know what I'm amazing business.
The general and concessions manager for the Colosseum were both indicted. And everyone sort of through legal proceeding managed to shift the blame around adequately enough that they're all acquitted. Forget it, Jake. It's Indiana town. Yeah. I did.
Hmm. In particular, the manager of the Coliseum managed to argue that he had no idea he needed a permit for indoor storage of propane and that, hey, the propane had been stored there in full view of inspectors for over 10 years at this point. Come on.
Who presumably was giving me stuff up. Yeah. Yeah. Good grief. So ultimately new procedures were put into place to ensure propane was not stored indoors at the arena. The Colosseum would be regularly inspected by the fire department going forward. There were about
$4.6 million in settlements from the gas company, about $70 million in insurance claims overall. Um, and the Colosseum, well, I managed to reopen it in only six weeks. Jesus. I mean, I guess you just pour some more concrete, you know, I hose it down, but like, they just, they just had this area roped off. Oh, um, put a ton over it. Jesus. It looks like the fucking fear bunker in there. Like Jesus Christ.
They fully repaired it in only a few months. Holiday ice returned the following year despite taking maybe people. Yeah. Despite fears that people will be afraid to go to the performance now. They sold out the arena. Yep. Yep, that tracks. Indiana strong. Yeah, not too much later than that. The Beatles play the Coliseum, but Indiana weird.
Yeah, as a result of the, as a result of the explosion, the Indianapolis Capitals hockey team moved to Cincinnati. This is, this is like really grave sort of like consequence of this, you know? Yes, exactly.
But this was the worst thing to happen at, well, this is the worst disaster in Indiana history, but there would never be another major incident at the Indianapolis State Fair until an inadequately secured stage collapsed in 2011 in a thunderstorm and killed a lot of people in the audience and also a stagehand. Well, I remember this was to be on say cake. No, this was country music. Yeah. Sure land, yeah. Oh, okay.
I do remember there being a stage collapse. Yeah, good grief. They're not good. Yeah. And so we learned a lot then. Yeah. Yeah, that's a structural issues at the Indiana. You can tell those columns are meant to be vertical and instead they're all the way over and not as hatched anymore. They invented a new style of column. You know, as Ionic, Doric, Corinthian, American, and whatever this is. This is like, VLA Liduk was always, you know, wanted to experiment with angled columns.
Oh my God. But yeah, that is the story of the Indiana State Fair explosion of 1963 or State Fair Coliseum. It wasn't horrifying, horrifying. Thank you. Yeah. Ooh, grimy. What did we learn? Put down some thoughts on my mats before you have your morning off. Shit.
That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe store stuff in the void. Fuck the Salvation Army. Yeah. For a different reason than we thought going in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That my main lesson is do not store propane indoors. Do not store propane. I'm just writing down. This may be an actionable item there, bud. Yeah.
Always store propane in a well-ventilated space. Away from popcorn maker. Oh yeah, don't store it next to the popcorn maker. Or the debts. You understood? Okay, yep, good. Good. Well, that was absolutely horrifying. Yeah, cranky. Well, I suppose we have a second on this podcast called Safety Third. Shake hands with D.
Oh, dear. Well, there's your problem hosts and also guests who are present. Wrong. No, no, no, no, not. Well, not as life or death as some of the submissions to safety third. I hope these two prefantic don'ts illuminate the disaster of so-called small business that Americans claim to love so much.
Uh-huh. For instance, you appear to have some kind of rat king of dogs here. I was about to say, it took me a while when I saw this picture. Is this two dogs or just one really fuck? Where's dog? Where's the axe? What's going on? I mean, I'm already happy because I can see dogs, but also where's the ass? I'm confused. Sort of a biblically accurate dog. Dog king? Yeah.
I previously worked as an environmental consultant, creating reports, assessing the environmental risk of a property during a sale. In October of 2020, I traveled alone to a fairly remote small factory in Michigan, which did plastic injection molding. Sounds like the opening to an extremely well-reviewed narrative indie game. The master picture on the right.
They were housing out for chores there. Very fluffy ones. Well, not as intensive a process as other manufacturing. This process does involve the use of huge complex machines applying 8,000 psi to make plastic parts from pellets. Now, my first red flag was a Trump flag. Actually, it was strong across the front of the factory, at least six feet by 10 feet in size. I was.
I was expecting a typical light manufacturing facility, but you could imagine my surprise when the husband and wife owners led me through led me through rooms full of ugly furniture to their bedroom where a Trump rally was playing on television to the boardroom to fuck them like what?
There's a lot of, there's a lot of problems here. That is one of them, but also yes, they lived in the factory, which was a converted shop school. Doesn't want going on here already. The median American voter somehow. Yeah.
Yeah. Venturing outside, I discovered they had four dogs, not mean guard dogs, but some big fluffy ones and tiny yappers. That's definitely dogging is something, there's things going on here. Are the dogs a metaphor? Or...
Yes, like Silent Hill, the dog is a metaphor for your kind of like loss of connection, you know. Yeah. They then proceeded to let all four dogs run around the active production floor where the giant and very old machines were operating, including 25 or more open drip pans of hydraulic oil. Oh boy. Leave the dogs alone. I'm not. No, no. What? Probably should not allow dogs in that space. No. People are fucking stupid, man. Yeah, keep going.
They're around 30, 55 gallon drums with random chemicals labeled on the side. And I asked for the purpose of all these chemicals. And he stated he bought them all at oxen auction unless they were all mislabeled. I went down to the chemicals auction and my bull some drums kind of random bought some random drums and I thought they were cool. This feels like a money laundering operation for.
Every time I try to understand Trump's people, I learn some something like this, and it just slips further from my grasp again. I would probably go down to the chemicals auction and buy some chemicals, though. That sounds fun. All right, Bob. Justin, who did you for those? The basement nuke. Yeah. I voted for a woman who lost. Same thing I do every election. We don't talk about that.
In fact, there were huge amounts of random equipment he had bought at oxygen with no discernible purpose. Oh, Liam, you are absolutely on the money with the money laundering. A hundred percent. That's what's going on. Money laundering slash holding. Yeah. I wonder how those dogs are doing now. Oh, keep it moving. I don't want to think about the dogs too hard. A second small business disaster I inspected involved a car dealership with a large auto repair shop. He went by the name of John Taliban.
Our repairs typically pump their drains or oil water auto repair places typically pump their drains or oil water separators. I'm going to say that's what that's supposed to read regularly as a lot of used oils flow to the floor drains in the repair bank.
Most I have been to have done this cleaning annually, if not more frequently. The manager I was interrogating seemed bewildered when I asked about the frequency of cleaning. It had not been done since he started in 1997, which was the year I was born. Oh, you twin. The oil is your twin. It's the same age as you.
Furthermore, the new and used oil tanks were in one room. I refuse to step in as the leaking oil was several inches deep, uselessly covered with rags and cardboard. Are they trying to create a conflagration? Like, oh, we just tossed the flammable stuff in that room. Guys, throw us the fire room. Yeah. He's put this over here with the rest of the fire. Yeah.
The oil leak was so bad that it was seeping through the center of black walls into the adjoining rooms. Oh God, what the fuck? While I was appalled with what I saw as someone who cares even a little about the environment, there's no guarantee they have to do anything to fix or clean this. Especially not now. The facility had also never bothered to clean up the leaks from the historic underground storage tanks, which is probably still polluting the groundwater to this day. Uh-huh.
Now I work with the ongoing engineering disaster that is NEPA, the National Environmental Protection Act, I believe is what that is. But I am glad to have seen many wild and interesting things in America's back rooms at this job. See photo too. Yeah, that's a back room. Yeah. Yeah.
I've been here since the first episode and I appreciate you all very much from Charlotte. Thank you Charlotte. Thank you Charlotte. Charlotte. I know. I part me finds the idea of the flammable stuff room humorous, but also I suspect that building is no longer as intact as it was when we saw these rooms by flammability like.
Jesus. Well, I was safety third. Our next episode will be on Chernobyl. Does anyone have any commercials before we go? I think we hit them. Yeah. Yeah. And my boot launched last night. And I got. Yeah. Yeah. So it's it's it's on sale. Go by the book. By the book. By the book. By the book. By the book. By the tickets to our live shows. Yes, Philly, particularly Philly. Yes. By the Philly Philmore seats. Philmore seats. Yes. Yeah.
Wow, almost two hours on the dot. All right. That was not too bad. Bye, everyone. Bye. Really good, guys.
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