After Questioning of Bomb Report Police Admit it Was a Fire
There may be legitimate reasons why police are not forthcoming with further information on the fatal “explosion” that killed a man in a car in front of the Kitchener-Waterloo courthouse on Friday, August 14th, 2020. In an article posted to the Gorski Consulting website on August 15th we questioned the reports that the resulting damage to the vehicle was as a result of a bombing, as per an IED. We noted that the physical evidence did not match what was being reported.
Now various official news agencies are reporting that police have changed their reports and are now indicating that the damage was caused by a fire but that it was deliberately set by the deceased.
This is the unfortunate circumstance that there is no independent investigative agency that can inform the public on this matter outside of what police say. Changes have occurred in the news media such that news organizations are centralized and a vast number of small independent agencies no longer exist. At the same time those few news agencies that exist have limited field personnel whose historical job has been to investigate and report, via news articles, to the public. In many instances news media simply report, word-for-word, from police press releases without conducting further inquiries as to the accuracy of those releases. Thus with respect to the present case, there is no information on the identity of the deceased, why his/her actions led to his/her death, or if indeed the person died via other means than what has been reported. The democratic checks and balances that allow information to come from various sources and prevent the manipulation of reported information is being challenged. Social media cannot replace proper, professional, investigative journalism.
Was it a Death of a Bomber or a Simple Car Fire?
We can swallow what we are told fully and completely or we can critically evaluate what we are told. Such is our intent is commenting on the reported explosion of a car in front of the Kitchener courthouse on Duke Street yesterday.
The site photos show the exploded vehicle with a tarp over it and we can also see the surrounding area. Comparing the results to what is typical in a simple car fire those results do not appear to be much different. There is no massive debris field. There are no pieces of metal strewn about a large perimeter. Even though the tarp covers the vehicle its structure can still be detected underneath and there does not appear to be a large extent of structural deformation. A closer view of the vehicle is shown below and confirms the relatively minor results of the “explosion”.
Unfortunately there are many incidents of vehicle fires that remain unexplained, some involving fatalities. The results of such incidents are thrown of out the public’s view with yesterday’s trash as new developments quickly grasp the public’s attention. Rarely is meaningful information provided so that such incidents can be prevented before a tragedy occurs. The repeated scenarios are like the surroundings of a ten-pin bowling alley where pins are destroyed and the responsibility of police and news media is simply to re-stack the pins for the strike of the next bowling ball. The fact that real-life deaths occur seem to be of minimal importance except that they make great news.
An incident such as the one discussed here needs better explanation. What evidence is there that this was an intended (or unintended) explosion of a bomb by a bomber? Could it be something that exploded carried by an ordinary member of the public? The incompetence (or corruption) of official entities in Beirut Lebanon earlier this month led to a massive explosion that killed hundreds or innocent citizens while injuring thousands more. While Lebanon may be another country the results of mistakes, negligence or downright corruption need to be kept in mind. Seemingly simple explosions or fires of a single vehicle need to be probed, not with paranoia that leads to uninformed conspiracy theories, but with logic and careful consideration.
Nothing Learned or Changed At Anniversary of Massive Explosion in London Ontario
Scene on the night of the massive explosion on Woodman Ave in London, Ontario on August 15, 2019. Miraculously no one was killed but several homes were leveled.
Yes there was a great deal of excitement when a good portion of the Woodman Ave block exploded in London, Ontario on August 15, 2019. The story made national headlines for several days. But what changes did it bring?
We know the incident started when an impaired driver rode the wrong way on a one-way road (Queens Ave) and struck the side of a residence at the location of a gas metre next to the driveway. It should have been a simple lesson to learn that locating gas metres next to a driveway is not a good idea for obvious reasons. And if that driveway is at the dead end of a street it is more liable to be struck simply because some driver could mistakenly miss the fact that the street was coming to an end – it has happened numerous times before in every city or rural location.
And if a driveway is narrow and it also contains a gas metre then surely this should be an even greater warning sign. It would seem that a reasonable approach would be to check various residences in a city like London Ontario to assess how many might have gas metres that are vulnerable to such repeated disasters. But were changes ever contemplated? Did anyone ever question whether it would be a good idea to conduct such a survey? Apparently not. Because another incident, almost on the anniversary of the massive explosion, occurred again, almost in the same circumstances, except luckily there was no explosion.
News media in London have reported that, on August 14, 2020, a pick-up truck struck a residence resulting in the impact of a gas metre on Grey Street in south central London.
One of the interesting observations from the news media information is that there was little damage visible to the home although the striking pick-up truck was at a somewhat unusual angle. This does not appear to be a massive impact to the house. Rather it looks something like a mistake that a driver made by bringing the truck too close to the house in the narrow driveway. We know the driveway is very narrow because we can look at it from views shown in Google Maps, an example shown below.
So, as a City representative, why would you allow the location of a gas metre within the very narrow confines of this driveway? Did anyone learn anything from the massive explosion that occurred in the City just a year earlier? Evidently not.
It is matters like these that show how we do not make corrections to dangerous conditions even though they have resulted in disastrous incidents and even though those incidents have been greatly publicized.
Wheel Separation Fatality on Hwy 401 Demonstrates Randomness of Death
A 24-year-old driver was killed today, August 12th, when a wheel separated from a trailer and crashed into the windshield of his van on Highway 401 between McCowan and Markham Roads near Toronto. Although a tarp was placed over the windshield and roof areas the extent of intrusion was still obvious. Yet this demonstrates the randomness of fatal consequences.
Only a few days earlier, on Highway 400, a scant message on the OPP Twitter account showed a similar mishap, with massive crush to the roof area, from a similarly separated wheel, as shown in the two OPP photos below. No further information was available including the precise location of the incident.
The fact that there was no publicity about the earlier incident on Highway 400 is because the three occupants did not sustain any serious injuries. Yet looking at the photos of the roof and windshield there was certainly potential for fatalities.
This is the problem when we publicize incidents based on their results rather than their injury potential. In situations that are less obvious, injury and death is often escaped just because of circumstance and luck. Yet the potential for major injury and death could be detected if the incident was properly evaluated. Yet we only publicize dangerous incidents after a tragedy has occurred rather than before. At Gorski Consulting we attempt to comment on many of these potentially dangerous incidents before they take their toll and we encourage others to bring about more awareness of the need to do so.
Traffic Conflicts in An Expressway Construction Zone
Further analysis and discussion has been provided in a new Gorski consulting article entitled “Traffic Conflicts In An Expressway Construction Zone”. This is in addition to a previous article posted on the Gorski Consulting website on July 17, 2020 entitled “Trench Warfare in the Expressway Construction Zone”. The new article can be viewed through the link below.
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