This raises the obvious question: What was she doing in Tyre in the first place? Perhaps residents of Sidon should be warned as well.
Anybody remember Red Green and the Air Dare?
Sad.
I wonder if the tire was way over-inflated? Or had nitrous gas in it? Or maybe the bulge was a very weak spot.
Wow,what a horrible accident..
We know life isn’t “fair” and one can die any time
but this just breaks my heart.
People who haven’t been THERE don’t relate to the
folks dying around them like veterans, I saw enough
in Vietnam and it’s never stopped, you just notice
it more.
http://jennawilcox.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html
It has been cold there. Ireland just received 15 inches of snow. There was a weakness in the tire, tire was probably at proper air pressure, and when brought into the warm car the tire and the air inside warmed up as well. When that happens the air pressure goes up and boom!
I had that happen to me with a bicycle tire. It was too cold to work on it outside so I brought it in and the tire blew while I was working on it.
If they thought it was dangerous enough to remove it from the wheel why did they not deflate it before bringing it into the passenger compartment? Sad.
RIP.
Never heard of tires being this dangerous. Freak accident.
Safe passage, Capt. Wilcox.
I once knew a guy who worked in a Firestone tire shop that this happened to. When the tire exploded, it broke his jaw and took out most of his teeth. He was lucky to live through it.
Ever since he related his story to me, some 30 years ago, I’ve felt anxious whenever I’m inflating a tire. I always use a tire gauge, so as not to over-inflate.
Deadly steel belt shrapnel. Bad as a roadside IED. May the lady rest in peace.
Prayers up for her loved ones.
Sad story, may she RIP.
A side note, whenever you are inflating your tires never face the sidewall of the tire. Position yourself off to one side in case the tire or wheel fail.
They teach AF and probably Navy mechanics to face the tread of the tire, not the sidewalls in case the tire and rim come apart.
Aged Tires: A Driving Hazard? - ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/aged-tires-driving-hazard-4826897
This is as crazy as the bottle of peroxide that exploded last week.
That’s unfortunate. But you know what, I think I might have rather held a bag or two up with me and put the tire in the back. Because unless you’re a jihadi, the suitcase is less likely to go BOOM.
http://jennawilcox.blogspot.com/
She has some interesting comments in her blog posts:
If you were to look at a picture of a soldier during WWII and a soldier in either Iraq or Afghanistan today, you would notice many differences. Probably the most noticeable different is the amount of gear that today's soldier carries. We are always trying to improve the way we fight and our body armor has saved many lives.
With that said, we shouldn't be wearing body armor in Afghanistan. We shouldn't be driving around in MRAPs either. These are conventional solutions to an unconventional war. We are treating the symptoms rather than the cause.
Let's start with the decision to upgrade from Hummves to MRAPs. The enemy was building bigger and bigger bombs that were capable of catastrophically destroying a Hummve. So now it is mandatory that we use MRAPs. And guess what? Now the enemy can build bigger bombs that will destroy an MRAP. What's after the MRAP? How big are the next generation of vehicles? MRAPs are big enough--they get stuck on unpaved roads, can't fit through the narrow roads, they are high and bulky and are extremely noisy. Whatever adaptions we make to our vehicles, body armor, etc the enemy will still find a way to kill us. Instead of focusing our efforts on protecting ourselves and adapting to the enemy's operations, maybe we should focus more on rooting out the enemy.
In COIN 101, you are taught that the population is the center of gravity. It's no longer a factory or military base. We are trying to win over the population and make them believe in our cause instead of the insurgent's. All of this is being done, of course, in concert with the local government. The local government and its ideals is what the people are fighting for. So we are trying to connect with the population, person to person. You can almost think about it like a politician trying to win an election. He needs to be a gregarious, sympathetic and passionate leader. Now tell me how this politician would do if he is from a different country than the one he is campaigning in. He wears different clothes. He speaks a different language. He has a different culture and a different religion. He can't campaign forever, he has to go home and visit his family. He would have to work ten times as hard as his opponent in order to be successful.
So when we drive around in our big, out of place vehicles, wear our bulky body armor that makes us look like monsters and spend most of our time on eye sore military installations, I think we are helping the insurgents by isolating ourselves from the population. This is our conventional mindset. This is why industrialized nations lose COIN wars. This is why Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires.