Anybody hear of car leaking acid? [%-)]
SanBernadino/Bloomington
Very nasty stuff!
“Hydrofluoric acid, one of the most corrosive, is used in glass etching, metal cleaning, electronics and other industrial uses. It can easily penetrate the skin, causing destruction to deep tissue and bone, according to the University of North Carolina Department of Environment, Safety and Health. Prolonged exposure can be deadly.”
Very strange - the leak was Saturday night - and it took until NOW to get a story written? Sounds like a report UP wishes had never made it to the media. Unusual for the railroad’s spokesperson to be spewing data yet not be named/quoted. Sloppy reporting and editing.
http://www.pe.com/localnews/sanbernardino/stories/PE_News_Local_B_spill15.38d2403.html
Happened too late for Sunday paper, and most papers have skeleton news staff working on Sundays. My guess is this came off the police and fire log when the beat reporter checked it first thing Monday morning. Spill was immediately contained on private property, so there was no need to issue an alert or panic the community. Leak was not directly UP’s fault, and my guess is it took one working day to gather enough information to issue a statement (a press conference isn’t warranted in an incident this size). When news is passed to the media via company statement route, no need to quote a spokeperson directly.
Please amplify your claim of “sloppy writing and editing”. I thought the story was fine.
EXTREMELY unusual for any UP incident not to have the spokesperson named. “A Union Pacific Railroad spokesman said Sunday …” is a bit too informal for a 48+ hour haz-mat situation.
“Weak writing” is omission of the spokesman’s name. Joe Arbonna is most often quoted - but there are others as well.
Reading the story critically - there are 3 sources of info - the fire department, the railroad, and a supporting source defining the hazards of the acid.
"The San Bernardino County Fire Dept. is treating it as a major event, with Hazmat, decontamination, rescue and medical personnel on hand 24 hours a day as the removal work continues, Tracey Martinez, a fire spokeswoman, said Tuesday.
The report was otherwise well written - but any journalism teacher would cite the missing name as a flaw.
OK, fair enough. I don’t see it as a flaw, plus most of my journalism instructors never worked in the business themselves and in hindsight didn’t have a clue.
But as I said, maybe there was no spokesman involved as the story did not use a direct quote (meaning no quote in statement) that would need to be attributed. Really, what else could UP say?
It does not sound like a major incident to me, and therefore I see no reason for the reporter to conduct an interview with a UP spokesman at this point. I suppose one could call the UP public relations department and ask how this was announced, if that’s an issue.