<story><title>Aberfan: The mistake that cost a village its children</title><url>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-150d11df-c541-44a9-9332-560a19828c47</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jhbadger</author><text>We read about similar disasters happening today in third world countries and we think &amp;quot;It&amp;#x27;s all due to the corruption in those places; such things could never happen in developed places&amp;quot;. It is really thought-provoking to think about how not very long ago they did.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jameshart</author><text>Had a conversation with a Chinese colleague after the huge explosion in Tianjin; they were worried that this sort of thing - industrial accidents, spillages, etc. - was happening in China all the time and they wondered why it didn&amp;#x27;t happen in the west. Of course these things all happened in western countries in the past - My feeling was that china is going through a hundred and fifty years of growth in a couple of decades. It takes an Aberfan, or a Boston molasses flood, or a Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, to get a country to fix the liability and legal frameworks it needs. And China is going through all those learning events in a much compressed timeframe. Open question whether it&amp;#x27;s actually learning from these events, too.</text></comment>
<story><title>Aberfan: The mistake that cost a village its children</title><url>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-150d11df-c541-44a9-9332-560a19828c47</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jhbadger</author><text>We read about similar disasters happening today in third world countries and we think &amp;quot;It&amp;#x27;s all due to the corruption in those places; such things could never happen in developed places&amp;quot;. It is really thought-provoking to think about how not very long ago they did.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>maxerickson</author><text>I think there are some similarities with the lead poisoning in Flint.&lt;p&gt;Poor alignment of interests, a disinterested external regulator, economic malaise, etc.</text></comment>