The same kind of situation happened 3 years ago in Rouen (France) where a Lubrizol chemical factory burnt down and the government said everything was just fine, before taking emergency measures, before finally saying that everything was fine all along. It was not the first incident with that plant, and the richer people did not wait for the release of the list of chemicals involved in the incident to leave the city.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lubrizol_factory_fire_in_Rouen
Fortunately your account has also posted good comments, but if you would please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules, we'd appreciate it.
Thanks
P.S.
Alright, now I see, that it would be under the "unrelated controversy" clause. Could you explain to me objectively how the parent comment doesn't fall under the same one too? And actually 40-50% of off-topic comments on HN?
On top of that it is not completely unrelated either, as it is imo globally the second most prominent example of government miscalculation/cover up, the lack of accountability which followed it, etc.
Well, for starters, switching to a highly divisive topic that has nothing to do with the original story; jacking up the indignation/inflammation levels; snark; and I suppose also the political reference.
> Could you explain to me objectively how the parent comment doesn't fall under the same one too?
I don't know about "objectively" because there's always interpretation involved—but I'd say the GP comment was quite a bit closer to the original topic; did not introduce a classic flamewar topic; contained more information than inflammation; and wasn't snarky.
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Re flamebait: I'm talking about what leads to flamewars in the statistical case. Suppose you drop a lit match in a dry forest. The argument "but it didn't cause a wildfire" is not a good one.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Baia_Mare_cyanide_spill