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Meteorite Destroys Warehouse In Auckland, NZ
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Dec 14, 2008 01:06 AM
from the creative-excuse-for-the-late-night-set dept.
from the creative-excuse-for-the-late-night-set dept.
vik writes "According to local media, multiple eye witnesses are reporting that a meteorite crashed into a warehouse in Auckland, New Zealand last night, setting it on fire. The warehouse roof was destroyed but no nearby buildings were damaged and there was only one minor casualty — a man who happened to be inside the building at the time. The fire service have not yet made an official announcement."
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Minor? (Score:4, Insightful)
But minor casualty????
Re:Minor? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Minor? (Score:5, Informative)
Casualty does NOT refer to deaths. It refers to the number of military members removed from duty due to wounds. This includes fatalities AND injuries.
Parent
Re:Minor? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not really "light-hearted parody", it's satire. And it's hilarious and highly entertaining satire.
And part of the fun is watching the fans of the book complain about it, and the people who take it at face value complain for almost opposite reasons.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A very good book about how democracy is horrible and corporeal punishment is awesome, indeed.
Democracy *is* horrible, it's just that all of the alternatives are so much worse that it looks good by comparison.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Neither of the two options necessarily makes a better soldier, it's just two different approaches, and Starship Troopers takes both to extremes. If you're a smart soldier you'll learn from it in the same way as you'd lear
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Minor? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Minor? (Score:4, Insightful)
Emergency wards on the NHS are often referred to as 'casualty'. This is not a comment on death rates in British hospitals.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Perhaps it was a politician?
Re:Minor? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Minor? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
My paste got cut off. Seriously.
2. one who is injured or killed in an accident: There were no casualties in the traffic accident.
3. any person, group, thing, etc., that is harmed or destroyed as a result of some act or event: Their house was a casualty of the fire.
4. a serious accident, esp. one involving bodily injury or death.
Re:Minor? (Score:5, Funny)
Like a captain casualty but with slightly fancier stuff on his shoulders.
Parent
It's these meteorites killing our economy (Score:2, Funny)
Do insurance companies cover stuff like this?
Re:It's these meteorites killing our economy (Score:5, Funny)
Do insurance companies cover stuff like this?
Depends entirely on the meteorite's composition, actually. For example, if you've got a nice nickel-iron ratio, you're probably good, but you're screwed if the thing had a high iron content. Insurance companies are usually very finicky about their falling extraterrestrial object damage coverage.
Parent
Re:It's these meteorites killing our economy (Score:5, Insightful)
They may, but in doing so could demand possession of the meteorite.
The meteorite, depending on what's left of it and its composition, could easily be worth far more than the property damage.
A quality meteorite is akin to money raining from the sky. If a nice big one ever hits my property, the first thing I'd do is secure it and shop the meteorite to perspective buyers.
Ron
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That's interesting. I guess they will have to find a shooting star collector if there is such a thing. I though these kind of disasters made people sick and caused serious unbalance if the meteor is big enough to screw with the balance of where it hits, the people of the town and the person that owned the building probably don't think of it as a blessing though at least not yet if what you are saying will happen that someone would actually pay money for it. I guess I am a cynic, I could see geologists studying it, not buying it.
There's a good market for them on eBay. Of course, unless it's an extremely large or rate meteorite, despite with GP said, it's unlike to be worth more than the property damage. Typical meteorites look to be going from around $10-50. The fact of the matter is, meteorites aren't very rare. OTOH, there's one current bid up to over $15 million right now. eBay search [ebay.com]
Riiiiight (Score:5, Funny)
[citation needed]
Re:Riiiiight (Score:5, Funny)
[citation needed]
What? Do you think this site is part the Wikimeteor Foundation?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
[citation needed]
Some guy called Mike.
Summary is wrong. (Score:5, Informative)
Some people were convinced the fire was caused by what may have been a meteorite, which was seen from various parts of the upper North Island streaking across the sky just after 10 o';clock.
Several callers claim the light in the sky was very bright, and it was described by some as a blinding flash. Others said it was trailing smoke.
One man, Mike, says he saw the object crash with an exploding noise in the Ponsonby area, and reckons it could have started the fire.
To summarize, a meteorite was seen, and may have even crashed in this area. That is all.
How unlucky is that man? (Score:5, Funny)
Workers compensation officer: How exactly did you get hurt?
Man: God smote me down
Boss: Don't mind Bob he's still a little shellshocked. He was struck by a meteorite. Or is that meteor. Was it a meteorite once it hit the roof or was it only a meteorite once it hit Bob?
Workers compensation officer: Well then if he can't even tell what hit him, we can't pay him can we?
Man: God smote me down, I tell you!
Re:How unlucky is that man? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
I'm already skeptical (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, I'd wait for the New Zealand Fire Service report before taking this seriously. All that the article says is that a warehouse caught fire in Auckland (not too unusual), and that people in Auckland saw a meteor and reckoned it "landed" somewhere near there. One person thinks he heard it crash with an exploding noise.
In short, some spectators are claiming a meteorite was involved in the fire, and the media's jumped on it because it makes the story more interesting. The NZ Herald seems to be the only news agency in New Zealand which I can find that's spinning the meteorite idea (actually the NZ Herald and Slashdot now that I've checked Google News). My guess is that it's just a coincidence that the fire started at roughly the same time.
People frequently see meteors in the sky and assume they can tell where the landed, even though most don't even land. People are nearly always wrong, and get confused by the perspective and brightness and distance which makes it look as if bright meteors are much closer than they are, and are heading much more steeply into the ground than they are.
Until the Fire Service comes out and states outright that it was a meteorite, and perhaps finds fragments, I'm not going to give the claim much credit. For a warehous fire in Auckland, it's more likely arson or an electrical fault.
Was on Mt. Eden... (Score:5, Informative)
Total BS. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm in Auckland, saw the meteor (which was awesome, BTW), and there's no way it hit anything or caused the fire. It was going totally in the wrong direction and it burned up well before the ground. In fact, it was probably so high that its trajectory would have taken it well out to sea.
This is just a classic case of people finding spurious links between unrelated events.
Re:Total BS. (Score:5, Informative)
How would you know that? Meteors that are big enough to reach the ground are seldom glowing when they do; once the upper atmosphere has slowed them down, the long fall through the lower atmosphere cools them off. They hit the ground pretty hot, but almost never glowing.
rj
Parent
Meteorites are not hot... (Score:5, Informative)
...they're often frozen on the surface when found right after the fall! It's a common myth that meteorites blazing hot. In reality, the molten surface of a meteorite has plenty of time to cool during the fall through cold atmosphere, and the interior of the meteorite remains very cold.
Auckland (Score:5, Funny)
On behalf of all New Zealanders living outside of Auckland, why couldn't the meteorite have been a little bigger?
IF true...this is big news for lawyers (Score:5, Interesting)
A meteor hits a warehouse...setting it on fire. This is the classic hypothetical example used when teaching the law of bailment in first year property class to law students.
What kind of warehouse I wonder? Did they hold on to their own goods only - or those belonging to others?
Every law student learns in first year property that a bailee of goods for hire is absolutely liable for them, even if the proverbial meteor falls from the sky and destroys them. That's the common law - and the over the top example literally used in the texts to make the point, too. And this happened in New Zealand - a common law country.
Problem is, the warehouse, if it is holding goods belonging to others, probably isn't insured for this. The insurer will claim Act of God. (And if "Act of God" is to mean anything in an insurance contract, it probably means a meteor). The warehouse owner will say "these goods not destroyed by a meteor - they were destroyed by fire, and we're insured for that".
The insurer will say "hell no; we're not paying." And off to court this will go.
Were the goods destroyed by a fire - or by a meteor? Because either way, the bailee is on the hook.
The resulting litigation answering that question will go down in the history books - and be subsequently learned by every law student in the common law world in their second month of law school - for the next several centuries.
Re:IF true...this is big news for lawyers (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting. Similar lawsuits happened in the U.S. (not necessarily a common-law country, depends on what law we're written since the split) because of hurricane Katrina.
People's homes would have water damage, but the insurance companies wouldn't pay because the people didn't have flood insurance. However, many of these people's homes didn't flood; the water got in because the roof had been torn off (or just windows had been broken) by the hurricane. And the people's insurance did cover wind damage.
In other words, flooding (uninsured loss) was directly caused by wind (insured loss), so does insurance pay? After lawsuits, the answer here was yes.
Parent
Meteorites do NOT land hot. (Score:5, Informative)
Happens every now and then... (Score:3, Interesting)
http://uregina.ca/~astro/mb_5.html [uregina.ca]
Haven't a clue as to what an insurance company would make of something like that...
Man had used 4 8 15 16 23 42 in lottery... (Score:3, Funny)
... and won millions of dollars, with which he bought the warehouse where he used to work. He got these numbers from a friend he met in a "local institution".
He's going to fly to Los Angeles tomorrow. ;-)
we're laughing at you, media (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but I'd expect an article of this calibre out of an 9th-grade journalism class, not a newspaper that calls itself The Herald. For entertainment purposes, let's take a closer look at this story, shall we?
Fair enough. Big fires are kinda neat.
Wait, what? Appliances? Were they throwing dishwashers and blenders at it?
It's unclear from this sentence just when the firefighters were dampening down hotspots. Before the fire? After? A week later?
Here's where the real questions start. What what he doing in the building? Was he supposed to be there? How did he get the cut? Did he see/hear how the fire broke out? Isn't the whole point of journalism to answer questions? I would love to see an article that talks about why the author was unable to obtain the most basic facts about the story. Was the writer prevented from talking to the firefighters and police? Okay, that's a good reason but since it's not in the article I have to assume that the writer was just being lazy.
And by the way, what happened to the good old days when every article came with a by-line so you know who wrote it? You never see those any more unless the writer is gunning for a Pulitzer in some long, drawn-out investigative piece.
"...suspects the blaze was suspicious"? Oh now he/she isn't even trying.
And now we veer headlong into the bizarre. As others have pointed out, meteors are not nearly hot enough to start a fire by the time they reach the ground so unless the place was storing flammable materials, a meteor did not start this fire regardless of whatever random passers-by thought they witnessed. (It should be noted that their stories are contradictory, so it's impossible to tell which, if any of them, actually saw or heard the meteor. People routinely make up stories and observations to make their own lives seem more interesting or important, especially in relation to some semi-major happening nearby.)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Any connection to Palin's church?:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/12/13/palin.church/index.html [cnn.com]
Re:Minor? (Score:5, Funny)
'Ere. He says he's not dead.
Yes he is.
He isn't.
I'm not!
He will be soon. He's very ill.
I'm getting better!
You're not. You'll be stone dead in a few minutes.
Parent
Re:Minor? (Score:5, Funny)
Under 18.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
In the UK, the equivalent to the ER department at a hospital is normally referred to as the casualty department, where they don't just deal with dead people.
There wouldn't be any point, would there?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's NOT used to mean people who died.
As has been said, a casualty in war refers to anyone who is hurt badly enough to have to be removed from duty. It includes both the dead and the injured. Even a broken leg is a casualty.
Media sources like to use the word casualty because casualty counts are always much higher and more dramatic sounding than fatalities.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A man was inside the building at the time. He was taken out and treated for a minor cut to his arm.
Oh yes, this is /.
Re:Dang, at least it was better than... (Score:5, Funny)
now that's some damn eloquent shit right there. give this man his Pulitzer.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It was on the news this morning a mother in AR, who had kill her three kids. They are taking the three babby back to New York too a lady to rest. My pary are with the father who lost his chrilden ; i am truley sorry for your lots.
Re:Smallville, NZ? (Score:5, Funny)
No.
The Smallville part isn't necessary as it is in New Zealand.
Parent
Re:Wait for the videos (Score:5, Interesting)
A poster upstream says that they were on "Mt Eden watching the fireworks display."
I bet some people were videoing that fireworks display and left their cameras on. They would be a good start to determining the meteors trajectory.
Frequently these people won't even know that they recorded the meteor's passing (it isn't what they were intending to capture, and they may not look at the tape past the end of the fireworks). But, you can bet that someone on Mt Eden recorded its passing. The local college astronomy department or one of the NZ astronomy clubs should issue a call for people watching the fireworks to search their tapes. If there were any major sporting events at the time, that would also be a useful source.
Remember, the camera doesn't have to be pointed at the sky. Capturing the time of the light flash, or the direction people are pointing, or the reflection of the meteor in windows or car hoods (bonnets) can be just as useful.
Parent
Re:Casualty (Score:5, Funny)
According to TV, three persons of minor importance work late in warehouses:
1) Janitors: expendable, first to die in alien invasions, zombie infestations, etcetera, the "canary in the coal mine" for unusual events.
2) Accountants: semi-expendable, often targets for bizzare assassination plots because they know too much.
3) Henchmen guarding illegal operation/loot: highly expendable. Usually die at the hands of an action hero.
Since the guy survived he's not a janitor, and the absent tell-tale trail of destruction confirms he's not a henchman either. So he must be an accountant, which means this wasn't simply a random meteor hit but an assassination attempt disguised as a meteor, a feat only possible my an evil mastermind with greater plans afoot.
This could mean the end of the world as we know it! PANIC!!!
Parent
Re:hahahahahah (Score:5, Funny)
There are very few interesting comments on this story.
Parent