EXPLODING GARBAGE TERROR hits Florida

Terror struck the Floridian city of Orlando this week as a garbage lorry exploded in a blast heard across the neighbourhood after a refuse operative tossed unidentified rubbish into its compactor. Local cops, firemen and bomb-disposal experts rushed to the scene and surrounding homes were evacuated, with other residents warned …

[ShaggyDoggy]

phlegmatically

spat out of the window, then

[Dave Bareham]

Sounds a really nice place to live!

Love the quote.

And it would appear that the community of Pine Hills, where the bin blast incident took place, uses sturdy garbage trucks, well able to stand up to such everyday Florida hazards as explosions or gunfire.

MMM....

[Anonymous Coward]

Orlando not Miami

Orlando is the home of Disney World and a bunch of other family-oriented theme park destinations and as such, relatively quiet.

If this would have been Miami instead of Orlando this would have been more towards the funny-because-it's-true side of the spectrum. Having happened in the home of the "happiest place on Earth" (or whatever Disney's tag line is) the joke is a little more ridiculous, but worthy of a good laugh nonetheless.

[George of the Jungle]

Happiest place on Earth

According to my relatives who live there, there are parts of Orlando you do not want to stray into at night. Not all of it is a happy place.

http://www.cityrating.com/citycrime.asp?city=Orlando&state=FL

[Anonymous Coward]

Slightly more accurately

Just avoid Orlando entirely.

The surroundings are about as attractive as the scum you find on ponds at the height of summer, and it has a climate and smell something like an armpit. Presumably Disneyworld is there so all known hells can co-locate.

[laird cummings]

Orange Blossom Trail...

Used to be a bad, bad place to be. Not part of 'happy town.'

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear now that...

the MOD has allegedly contacted the manufacturers of the garbage trucks with a view of using modified versions as patrol vehicles in Afganistan.

[Anonymous Coward]

Playmobil...

..please

[Adrian Challinor]

Agreed

We need a reconstruction.

[Anonymous Coward]

do it right

we need a DEconstruction.

[Anonymous Coward]

this is Not a title

When I binned a rather large CRT monitor, the implosion was awsome.

[Wize]

Dropping my old 31 inch TV into a skip was quite impressive.

Was at the local dump dropping into an 8 - 10 foot skip (set of steps at the public's side)

Was going to watch it land when I lowered it over the side and let go, but thought better of it. Lucky I did as bits of glass flew up higher than the sides of the skip, then the cloud of metallic dust came out. Legged it to the van and did up the windows.

Shame, that TV lasted me 8 years before it started going wonky.

[Lottie]

I suppose

it COULD have been an oxygen container. Lots of folk go to Florida to retire. Many elderly folk have oxygen prescribed...Maybe someone just bought the house and was throwing out all the shite the previous occupant had left?

Either way, more stories about florida. Makes me forget about the snow.

[Wize]

No 'Bin Laden with Explosives' type comments?

I'll go get mine...

[Graham Dawson]

Nah.

They're a load of garbage these days. I hear the moderators just toss them out and refuse to have anything to do with it.

[Arclight]

Carried on with his round?

If that was in the UK they'd have recalled all the trucks, stopped rubbish collections all over the country, the binmen would be off for the rest of the year with post traumatic stress disorder, and there'd be line of ambulance chasers a mile long.

[Lee Dowling]

And

And then you'd have another fecking bin for "explosives" that would only get collected once per annum, and you'd be fined for putting a dead match in your normal refuse.

[Mister_C]

you forgot something...

anyone owning a copy of any council published list of revised holiday collection dates would be done for possessing information likely to be of use to a terrorist

[CD001]

And...

And the government would blow £millions on a Public Health and Safety Campaign about the dangers of pressurised gas cannisters eventually making it illegal to dispose of empty deodorant cans in with the rest of the household rubbish... we'd have to take them to specialised disposal facilities (built by contractors who're chummy with certain MPs for hugely inflated sums of money) where they could be disposed of safely by men in armoured HazMat suits.

There would doubtless be quangos, websites and entire IT projects dedicated to the campaign - all of which the government would pay well over the odds for and none of which would actually work.

... depressing, isn't it?

[AlistairJ]

And ...

The local police would have staged a press conference asking for someone to come forward with information about the perpetrators of the pressurized-canister dumping incident, then arrested the nearest-dwelling social misfit, concocted the necessary evidence and locked him up for the best part of a decade.

[Ginolard]

re: Carried on with his round

Actually, the probably wouldn't have taken it at all because either

a) It was in the wrong coloured bin

b) It hadn't been cleaned before throwing it away (this still beggars belief!)

[Nigel 11]

Propane, I should think

A can of propane makes quite a decent kaboom, if it leaks out in a fairly confined space and mixes with air in the right explosive ratio. I remember reading somewhere that dustcarts are actually designed with this mishap in mind, so that the top of the cart gives way rather than its sides, channelling the blast and the garbage-shrapnel upwards (hopefully harmlessly, unless the cart is under a bridge at the time).

[Steve X]

Mental image

I've just had this mental image of a garbage truck with sides briefly bulging before vomiting its contents back out over the street.

Where did I put that old propane tank...

[VinceH]

Letters, Digits.

'Personal Injury Lawyers News reports that he suffered no more than "cuts and scrapes"

...and went on to add that this meant any compensation claims would be relatively small, so it's not worth the effort of any of their readership persuading the operative to sue the householder.

[Gareth Lowe]

Personal Injury Lawyers News

Personal Injury Lawyers News reports that he suffered no more than "cuts and scrapes" worth $20,000.

[Anonymous Coward]

$20,000?

you mean worth $20,000,000, but they might consider accepting an offer for $20,000?

[William Boyle]

New meaning

This gives new meaning to that ageless term "sh!t happens"!

[Tim #3]

Oh dear

There's an organisation/bureau called "personal injury lawyers news"? Don't people have any shame nowadays?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shame?

no, or we wouldn't be here on a daily basis...

[Daemon ZOGG]

"Rubbish truck 'goes kaboom' in bin blast incident"

My first thought was "Oh great.. now we're going to have the TSA scanning are garbage before it goes into the truck". Then, logical-thought kicked in (something the TSA isn't capable of).

After a major holiday weekend, with barbecue grills and turkey friers' abound, it was most likely a used propane canister. Most refuse/garbage trucks in the US can handle this kind of torture.

[Ascylto]

Binnies!

Oh no!

Why did you have to let the British Binnie know?

They'll now insist that WE empty our own bins! In Rochdale the Binnies have the "two fingers" test in which a bin than cannot easily be moved using two fingers is just left.

Remember when they used to collect your bin?

[Zippy the Pinhead]

Garbage Truck accidents

I watched one catch its load of garbage on fire once. I guess someone threw something away that didn't mix well with another item and the result was a slow smoldering fire. So the operator of the vehicle dumped his load right in the middle of the street and the fire department had to pick through it and hose it down. The entire neighborhood watched amused until the truck drove away leaving the pile behind.

[Aussie Brusader]

kaboom?

I haven't heard that since watching cartoons. Every Aussie knows the correct way is 'chk chk boom'

[tony trolle]

BANG !

In fact it was an empty carbon dioxide canister which when compacted, the bottom of it blew out

[Anonymous Coward]

This is news is it?

A garbage truck was not blown up and a binman suffered merely the kind of injuries that many small children face in playgrounds across the nation every day

[Steve 6]

"... explosions or gunfire"

"... uses sturdy garbage trucks, well able to stand up to [...] hazards as explosions or gunfire."

Perhaps they should be used in countries like the Afgan of Stan as cheap RVs