Woman badly burned decanting petrol

[Blu]

here

Horrific.

It doesn't sound ilke a 'jerrycan' incident, but I hope there are no more like it over the coming weeks. Safer to stay put than store petrol or be pouring, syphoning or decanting it.

She didn't realise the danger.

'The woman, named locally as Diane Hill, 46, was pouring fuel from one container to a glass jug after her daughter's car ran out of petrol on Thursday evening.'

It is possible that without teh fuel panic that this would never have occurred.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2122500/Fuel-crisis-Francis-Maude-urged-quit-Diane-Hill-suffers-40-burns-decanting-petrol.html

This is what the chap whose fire department attended said:

'People fill at forecourts in a very safe and controlled area and once you move away from this, people might not be familiar with the potential that the vapour has of being ignited very, very easily.'

That's all I was trying to say. Thankyou to those who backed me up. I agree that coldhearted is an appropriate term for a lot of the posts on this thread. How sad that we can't offer any empathy at all to a mother like ourselves.

It is not cold hearted to say that people should take responsibility.

I am dreadfully sorry for Diane Hill, but this casting about to blame someone is neither necessary or helpful.

I didn't say it was coldhearted to say that. I do believe it is coldhearted to say 'she was really stupid' or 'she was not clever', while insisting that everyone with half a brain would realise that petrol vapour is flammable at a certain distance from a flame and in certain circumstances. (what distance is another matter - no one has answered that question yet).

I am not saying that people should refuse to take responsibility for their actions. What I am saying is that the government should take responsibility for its instructions and not assume that everyone will automatically know the limits of safety around fuel, because clearly, not everyone does.

The FBU are calling for urgent safety messages, so they are clearly not happy with the level of coverage given thus far. I see them as the best qualified and experienced body to make such a call. They want Governmental input into the message, but the key point is that no such message would be required had the (obvious) public interest of getting the safety message across been taken more seriously. There was plenty of doom "someone is going to get hurt", but next to nothing on instructions for minimising risk.

None of the papers today have any safety information in prominent positions.

Indeed one repeats the misquoting of Maude "blundering minister Francis Maude faced calls to quit for urging drivers to hoard fuel at home", with nothing nearby giving the safety messages (or saying where they can be found).

Obviously some commentators and some in the media are content with the level of coverage, but I'm with FBU on this one.

the DM are to busy with a story saying how the family blame the government

"How was she to know, anyway."

Erm, I thought everyone knew that petrol and naked flames wren't a good combination. Why do you think that smoking on garage forecourts has always been banned?

This woman obviously didn't think thiis through, but she has paid a very high price for her stupidity. I hope she makes a good recovery, but it will be a long and slow one. Poor lady.

I think it stands to reason that if you don't have a garage in which to safely store sons petrol then you don't store it. Decanting petrol from a jug, whilst cooking, was s radical interpretation of Francis Maude's advice to say thd least.

I feel v sorry for her but it was incredibly stupid and no one else is to blame.

I agree. What an utterly stupid stupid woman. If Francis Maude tells everyone to jump off a cliff would we all go and do it?

Why didn't she just take the whole petrol can to the car instead of decanting it into a jug? Surely this would be neater all round as they come with a nozzle, unlike a glass jug.

If the government ran TV adverts and information campaigns to try and prevent people doing every permutation of daft thing, there would be nothing on TV except govt. advisory content.

I agree. What an utterly stupid stupid woman. If Francis Maude tells everyone to jump off a cliff would we all go and do it?

Ffs if she'd have truly known the dangers she wouldn't have done it would she. It's not as if she thought 'decanting petrol is dangerous but maude told me to so it must be ok.' The poor woman clearly didn't realise.

She won't make a good recovery. Does calling her stupid make you feel really big and clever?

What happened to sympaathy fgs.

Well said, AuntFini

as I said I am sure people have sympathy for her, I know I do, horrible thing to happen.
but that doesn't stop it from being a stupid thing to do.

I'm no Einstein, but I'm not stupid enough to panic buy petrol not decant it in my kitchen with the hob on. If that's not sheer stupidity then I don't know what is.

As I read on MN once, sense is most certainly NOT common.

It was a dangerous thing to do but it's only stupid if you know it's dangerous, and she obviously didn't.
Calling her stupid won't make her burns go away so why bother saying it? She was just trying to do a helpful thing for her daughter, she didn't realise the risk she was taking, and now she'll pay for that for the rest of her life. I think that's quite enough without the public calling her names.

If you manage to reach the age of 46 without realising petrol is highly flammable then it must be due to huge lack of intelligence on your part. Or stupidity in other words. Doesn't mean I have no sympathy for her suffering. But I do think she is very very stupid.

The Fire Brigades Union don't think people are stupid, they realise that people are not aware of the risks

''The public do not understand the extreme dangers posed by petrol handling or storage and they must be advised as a matter of urgency. It is particularly critical at this time when we are entering a period when kids are off school.'

Following on from what you say jasminerice, she and probably thousands of others like her, could have done with more advice and information on the subject.
As you are saying, sense is not always common. And not about this subject.

I am really shocked at the comments of some people on this site.

This woman has 40% burns.

Have a bit of bloody decency.

And no, lots of people don't really understand about these things.

Since cars are so much more reliable
Electric mowers are probably more common that petrol ones
etc

For eg a lot of people don't even know how the internal combustion engine works, how the petrol gets to make the car go. It doesn't mean they are stupid, it simply means they don't know.

There are not many petrol related accidents in the UK so petrol safety awareness is just not on the agenda for a lot of people.

If Francis Maude is able to go around making bloody ignorant comments and he is a politician, then why the deeply unpleasant comments about this woman.

She is a mother

She was trying to do something for her daughter

She fucked up

I'm sure none of us has ever done that

Honestly you bunch of b*stards. How do you think her family might feel if they saw this thread? Huh? Is it helpful to describe a whole person as stupid? When they might have done ONE THING that was catastrophically misjudged? Did you really need to write that or might it have been better to say nothing, instead?

I can't BELIEVE what some of you are saying. You should be ashamed.

And yes I am really angry.

Sorry, most of you are not calling the woman stupid. Just what she did. The others know who they are.

It's just fucking unkind.

well said flightty and sq