[HN Gopher] The World's Biggest Tire Graveyard in Kuwait Is on Fire
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The World's Biggest Tire Graveyard in Kuwait Is on Fire
Author : vinnyglennon
Score : 123 points
Date : 2021-08-10 12:51 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (scoopempire.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (scoopempire.com)
| raxxorrax wrote:
| That must smell awesome and is probably really healthy. Perhaps
| it won't be the largest tire graveyard for long.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| In small concentrations like you'd get downwind it smells like
| burnouts, not great, not too bad. In high concentrations tire
| smoke is pretty acrid and should be avoided.
| swagtricker wrote:
| So competitive for status - just had to show up Springfield by
| being larger, eh?(
| https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/Springfield_Tire_Yard ).
| potiuper wrote:
| All that had to be done was to cordon it into zones like in the
| bottom left.
| JPKab wrote:
| This is horrific, and so is the "journalism" on display in this
| article.
|
| How did this tire fire start? Zero information written.
|
| What are the 4 companies? Zero information written.
|
| How realistic is the "plan to recycle 95% of the tires" and
| "replace them with sustainable housing". Zero.
|
| What efforts are being undertaken to put the fire out? Zero info.
|
| I could be forgiving if it didn't come off as so aggressively
| lazy and unprofessional.
| gkanai wrote:
| Look at the author of the piece: "Aya is an aspiring journalist
| who is into everything related to culture. A curious explorer
| and traveler, she graduated from the faculty of Arts with one
| mission in mind: experience everything. She is interested in
| filmmaking and scriptwriting and hopes to one day write her own
| feature film."
|
| can you expect "journalism" from someone who is not a
| journalist?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| We expect middle-schoolers to address "who what where when
| why and how" when writing stuff. I think we should be able to
| expect the same from paid journalists whether or not they're
| professionally trained.
| djrogers wrote:
| FTA: " You may wonder why such flammable and hazardous material
| is stored in a place where weather conditions exceed 50 degrees
| Celsius"
|
| Not to be too snarky, but if you wonder this, you don't have much
| of a grasp of how fire works. This wasn't spontaneous combustion,
| and tires burn just as well at 2* as they do at 50*...
| version_five wrote:
| The article read like it was written by GPT, I don't think we
| can read too much into any "analysis" it makes, it's just
| filler to get to a word count.
| JPKab wrote:
| I thought the same thing. Looking at the last 18 months of
| utter and complete quantitative illiteracy on display in
| journalistic institutions covering COVID, I'm not surprise at
| this absurdly simplistic thinking on other subjects.
|
| Edit: You weren't being snarky, and have every right to
| complain about ignorant, non-analytical people being given a
| platform to write foolish statements like "it's hot there so
| fires start easier".
| aaron695 wrote:
| The Sun thinks the same -
|
| "Many have questioned the wisdom of storing such combustible
| materials in a country where the temperatures brush 50C." -
| https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15778161/worlds-biggest-gravey...
|
| So does the Australian government - "The higher the temperature
| the more likely it is that a fire will start or continue to
| burn. This is because the fuel is closer to its ignition point
| at high temperatures and pre-heated fuel loads burn faster." -
| https://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/community-safety/bus...
|
| I think to prove they are wrong is complicated. What they say
| is true. Intuition also makes people think it's true (anyone
| who's started a fire on a hot days knows it rips). You have to
| simulate this effect is orders of magnitude lower than the
| other effects. Of which it's still hard to know which one that
| counts. Is it wind speed or the missing moisture or are they
| the same order of magnitude?
|
| But how can one complain about an article that thinks tires
| author thinks tires get executed when they are old - "filled to
| the brim with executed car tires"
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Miraculously, the smoke was blown away to the direction of the
| sea, and not inland.
|
| That actually seems like the worst outcome. According to the
| satellite photo in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28131932,
| it looks like Kuwait City is between the landfill and the sea.
| Inland looks like it's mostly desert.
| _Microft wrote:
| The wording also suggests that polluting the sea would be more
| acceptable than polluting land area.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| Well, the ocean dillutes whatever you dump into it to much
| lower concentrations than the rivers do when you dump
| something into their drainage basins.
| _Microft wrote:
| I think we unsuccessfully conducted a similar experiment
| with the atmosphere already.
| userbinator wrote:
| There's a huge difference between things like global CO2
| emissions, and this single fire which is probably a tiny
| insignificant fraction of that.
| _Microft wrote:
| The attitude that the oceans are huge and that it is just
| a minor event here or there that could not possibly
| affect the sea a lot is exactly the source of the
| problem. A fire here, a garbage patch there, some mercury
| from gold mining, ... _it just adds up_.
| tpmx wrote:
| Hmm, this (or a previous) fire is already visible in the Google
| Maps satellite view.
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sulaibiya,+Kuwait/@29.2573...
|
| However, the tire pile arrangements look different than in the
| photo in the article...
| this_was_posted wrote:
| I wonder what impact the chemicals in the smoke have on the
| water treatment plant that is visible nearby
| ilamont wrote:
| _the tire pile arrangements look different than in the photo in
| the article_
|
| Is it possible they have moved some of the tires out of the way
| to create a fire break?
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Hmm, that is enormous. At least it looks like just one pile is
| burning at present.
|
| My understanding is whenever Iraq lit the oil wells on fire
| they just pumped up seawater to help with extinguishing the
| blaze. I wonder if that sort of thing could work here?
| Basically just flood the area with seawater.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| my guess is that the problem is the assignment of
| responsibility and the requirement to pay for cleanup - the
| technology is available and already nearby
| capitainenemo wrote:
| Maybe I'm misinterpreting the photo, but I saw the path as a
| firebreak, like they were using the vehicles to separate the
| burning tires from the rest of them.
| [deleted]
| lisper wrote:
| Interesting that this satellite imagery is so recent. I tried
| panning over to the Dixie fire in California, which has been
| burning for a month, and it still shows unburned forest. So
| maybe what is showing up on Google is a different, earlier
| fire?
| tpmx wrote:
| Yeah, this article seems to mix up a few things. There have
| been previous fires at this site:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulaibiya#Tire_graveyard
| zokier wrote:
| Bit of sleuthing shows that the photo is claimed to be taken
| on "April 29, 2021"
| http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-04/29/c_139915543.htm
|
| Meanwhile Getty has the satellite picture dated as "April 15,
| 2021" https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/maxar-
| closeup-...
|
| So they are likely showing same event, Maxar is pretty good
| at getting images of current events as they happen. Don't
| know what sort of deal they have with Google to show them on
| Maps though.
| rasz wrote:
| Maybe they were ordered to clean up. This is a popular hazardous
| substances disposal scheme in EU:
|
| You rent a warehouse/piece of land in Poland claiming to be a
| transportation/construction/recycling company usually using
| forged documents or homeless person fronting whole thing.
|
| You get paid to remove hazardous waste from
| UK/Scandinavia/Germany, you stockpile until the place is full.
|
| Finally you either set the place on fire to cover your tracks, or
| the owner stops receiving payments, discovers whats stored on his
| property and decides to take insurance hit instead of having his
| assets blocked for several years while courts try to figure out
| if/what/who is going to pay for lawful disposal.
|
| Just 2 days ago https://wielun.naszemiasto.pl/kolejny-pozar-
| skladowiska-w-na... already mentions one from one week earlier.
| https://portalkomunalny.pl/gospodarka-odpadami/pozary-sklado...
| Usually couple a month up to one a week, year after year for the
| last >10 year. Seemingly no political will to fight this scheme.
| lazyjones wrote:
| In other news, landfills in Romania have legal issues and waste
| disposal companies can't afford to do their work with the
| revenue from government contracts because the EU decided to
| mandate 50% waste recycling and high standards for landfills.
| So waste gets dumped on the streets and landfills operate
| illegally.
|
| Sometimes high standards for environmental protection obviously
| have the opposite effect of their intent.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| If you only have a small amount of hazmat you find someone
| who's renting storage trailers and pay them cash, fill the
| trailer(s) and then drop off the face of the earth.
|
| If you just have tires you can make a pile visible from the
| road. Given enough time some teenagers with a flare gun will
| make them go away.
| baxthem4n wrote:
| Now the tires, next time will be the car batteries
| pomian wrote:
| Reminds one of the Polish, (but globally applicable) pre war
| joke, re-made during the communist era: "How could you allow
| your warehouse to burn down, empty!?"
| baud147258 wrote:
| the joke would be that you should claim that the actually
| empty warehouse burn down full, to claim insurance on the
| content, right?
|
| that reminds me of a rumor that I heard about the Atlantic
| Conveyor (UK merchant ship carrying military equipment sunk
| during the Falklands War): many military units claimed their
| equipment was on the ship (and thus lost), presumably to get
| replacements, that in the end the ship was supposed to
| carrying more supplies than its capacity
| bserge wrote:
| Hah, classic "green" countries.
| McPepper wrote:
| *Maybe they were ordered to clean up.*
|
| I would love to believe that would be the case as it would show
| there was some effort given, no matter how bad the
| implementation was. Unfortunately, Kuwait is ran by decade-old
| mass negligence that runs from small institutions/businesses
| all the way up to the government.
|
| I think the funniest thing happened about this situation is
| that we never knew about the fire but from the international
| media picked it up THEN the local media picked up on it. It's
| even more comical when you realize how tiny Kuwait is.
|
| Source: A Kuwaiti.
| fruit2020 wrote:
| Same happening in Romania
| Joker_vD wrote:
| Or if you're more conscientious, you ship it to China instead.
| Then, of course, one day COVID hits, China closes its borders
| and your green, eco-friendly, carbon-reducing recycling
| facility grinds to a halt because the plastic keeps coming but
| you can't ship it away.
| nradov wrote:
| China stopped accepting most recycling waste in 2019 before
| COVID hit.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2019/08/20/750864036/u-s-recycling-
| indus...
| tpmx wrote:
| > Or if you're more _conscientious_ , you ship it to China
| instead
|
| Are you seriously claiming that the Chinese government is
| better than the Polish government at making sure this kind of
| trash is handled correctly?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I feel this must have been sarcasm, probably related to how
| sending plastic to a recycling facility was just as likely
| to end up in the ocean thanks to China buying it off of
| recycling dealers (for ballast IIRC, can't send all those
| cargo ships back empty)
| tpmx wrote:
| It wasn't sarcasm.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| No, it actually was. Source: I wrote that comment.
| stevenhuang wrote:
| Your sarcasm meter is likely broken I'm afraid
| [deleted]
| gruez wrote:
| >Then, of course, one day COVID hits, China closes its
| borders
|
| I doubt China closed its borders to _cargo_ because of covid.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| In Poland this has been going on for years. It has nothing to
| do with China and covid.
| tpmx wrote:
| The Schengen area shouldn't have been expanded so rapidly, IMO.
|
| Btw, what we in Scandinavia mostly read about is the constant
| flow of stolen goods to e.g. Poland and neighbouring countries.
| This was interesting to read about.
| polskibus wrote:
| The amount of intraeuropean libel is truly outrageous. Such
| things are often presented without much context and
| comparison to crime inside the particular country and other
| misdeeds such country allows for. For example we in Poland
| often read about Scandinavians ruining the fish in Baltic sea
| by fishing way above their qoutas and getting away with it,
| without replenishing the fish population. I'm sur
| Scandinavians could say sth on their defence, but most media
| don't bother to double check the facts on each side because
| sensationalism and strengthening stereotypes get more
| eyeballs.
| tpmx wrote:
| Did you already forget what my comment was commenting? It
| was literally just one step away.
| Haemm0r wrote:
| I can't imagine that borders would prevent this kind of
| dumps.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The difference is that when the borders were still up
| illegal goods movements were detected more frequently, but
| most of this waste movement is and was perfectly legal
| under EU single market rules. The 'four freedoms'
| explicitly spell this out.
| tpmx wrote:
| This brings up the whole Multi-speed Europe thing:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-speed_Europe
|
| Regardless, anyway you view it, these dumpings are a
| failure of the particular way the current EU has been
| implemented. There were other options.
| bserge wrote:
| Yeah that shit's like "made in China = bad" by now. But I'm
| not surprised northern countries keep "reporting" on it.
|
| Oh no, we found a dozen servers and power tools in some
| Polish guy's car, must be stolen, they can't afford to buy
| them second hand!
|
| Jesus wept.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's a bit more complicated than that. Schengen had a lot
| more effect on the border checks for people than it did on
| the border checks for goods, which were next to non-existent
| already.
| tpmx wrote:
| And at the same time not. Schengen abolished border checks
| for vehicles passing national borders.
|
| Border checks for goods were _not_ next to non-existent
| pre-Schengen. They caught a lot of stuff. At least in
| Sweden.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Those were spot checks at best. The amount of internal
| goods traffic within the EU is astounding, you're looking
| at 10 million tons per year.
| tpmx wrote:
| I actually ran the numbers, napkin style, a while ago. I
| think an efficient border control was happening, and
| still could be happening soon, if we were to re-implement
| it.
|
| I was looking at whether it would be financially prudent
| for Sweden to start up border checks again to stop the
| flow of stolen goods out of the country. The conclusion
| was a clear yes.
| edoceo wrote:
| I believe it and can you show the numbers?
| tester756 wrote:
| this is sad
| omegaworks wrote:
| welcome to globalized capital, where we race to the bottom in
| places not considered "valuable" to the elite
| bennybob wrote:
| So what's your alternative to "globalised capital"? No
| money moves from rich to poor countries?
| omegaworks wrote:
| "Rich" countries should not be allowed to externalize
| their environmental concerns.
|
| What makes a country "poor" but the value placed on the
| lives of the people in it?
|
| The resource-rich countries of Africa and South America
| are considered "poor" because the US and Europe see their
| people and institutions as expendable and replaceable.
| ben_w wrote:
| > "Rich" countries should not be allowed to externalize
| their environmental concerns.
|
| Morally sound, but how would you enforce that?
|
| > What makes a country "poor" but the value placed on the
| lives of the people in it?
|
| The value of the goods, services, business, and real
| estate that those people collectively control.
|
| > The resource-rich countries of Africa and South America
| are considered "poor" because the US and Europe see their
| people and institutions as expendable and replaceable.
|
| Assuming this is true, how did China shift from being
| poor to being not poor? Did they make their institutions
| unexpendable and irreplaceable, or did they do something
| else?
| omegaworks wrote:
| >The value of the goods, services, business, and real
| estate that those people collectively control.
|
| You're asserting that _the people_ collectively control
| the capital wealth (goods, services, businesses, real
| estate) of the country. This has been tried by more than
| a few countries but the folks that do try to do this are
| often labeled "communists" and toppled by US and
| European interests.
|
| >how did China shift from being poor to being not poor?
|
| China shifted from being poor to not being poor by
| asserting that control over its capital wealth, and thus
| far has been able to avoid having its institutions
| undermined by the west. Not that it hasn't[1] been[2]
| tried[3].
|
| 1. https://www.politico.com/newsletters/weekly-
| trade/2021/07/19...
|
| 2. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-
| politic...
|
| 3. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-49317695
| tpmx wrote:
| This is a matter of naive EU internal border policies vs an
| expansionism policy.
| lazyjones wrote:
| Why, do you think matters are very different if each
| country does it on its own turf?
|
| The real issue is that the EU is coming up with extremely
| naive regulations that put the burden of cost and effort
| on citizens and inefficient local governments to enforce
| them. If they really want these substances to be disposed
| of safely, they have to make it free for corporations and
| individuals to hand them over to a government agency and
| fund this with taxes.
| jacquesm wrote:
| As opposed to for instance the USA's internal border
| policies?
|
| EU countries are closer now to US states than to
| independent sovereign entities when it comes to the
| movement of goods and people. This is by design, not by
| accident and there is nothing naive about it, it's a
| founding principle of the EU.
| tpmx wrote:
| I see, you're an EU federalist.
|
| Your kind is growing more and more rare.
| ben_w wrote:
| When I was last in the USA, I drove through a customs
| checkpoint between California and Nevada.
|
| There are zero customs checks between states in the EU
| customs union, because that's literally what "a customs
| union" _means_.
|
| If you don't like the EU or don't want to be a part of
| it, that's your opinion and yours to say, but what it
| _is_ includes a customs union.
| patentatt wrote:
| That's a dept of agriculture checkpoint, not a customs
| checkpoint.
| jacquesm wrote:
| No, I actually read the documentation that came with the
| package. 'My kind' indeed.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| NonContro wrote:
| Why not just formalise the whole system and ship the waste to
| waste-to-energy plants?
| burntoutfire wrote:
| This waste is very toxic and very expensive to dispose of
| properly. Hence, Polish gangs make a ton of money by charging
| western industrial clients for properly disposing of their
| toxic waste, and then just dumping this waste wherever in
| Poland. There were probably hundreds of cases of discovered
| illegal toxic waste dumps across Poland in the past years
| (and who knows how many were not discovered yet). Just in one
| recent case, the city of Sosnowiec will have to pay around 20
| million euros (a non-negligible part of the city budget) to
| dispose of waste left in one lot by some gang.
|
| Fortunately, Polish authorities are slowly catching up to
| this and are creating special police units dedicated to fight
| this kind of crime.
| AareyBaba wrote:
| Documentary showing the Kuwait tire facility. Close up view of
| the yard including the boss wearing a business suit and tie in
| the middle of the desert. https://youtu.be/y0ah6QZpI3M?t=44
| Animats wrote:
| Fires at tire recycling plants are all too common.
|
| There are good techniques for recycling tires. May not be
| profitable, but they work.[1]
|
| When looking at YouTube videos of tire recycling operations, take
| a close look at the throughput. If the beginning is a front-end
| loader dumping in a load of tires, that's good. If it's one guy
| lifting a tire onto a conveyor, they're not serious about it.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/UWyLzXHqJSs
| ksaj wrote:
| I went to a high school where the running track was part tar
| and part ground up auto tire. It was by far the best track I
| ever ran on.
| blamazon wrote:
| Allegedly there is a problem with thieves burning these piles to
| get the steel belts inside the tires which hold some value.
| age_bronze wrote:
| I don't know why Arabs intentionally burning tires is a thing,
| but in Israel, there's an issue of Arabic villages regularly
| burning tires. As long as you live near a village, you're going
| to smell burnt tires every month or so. It's disgusting and
| unhealthy and it always comes from Arabic villages. Seems like
| they just don't care about neither the environment nor the health
| of everyone.
| pugworthy wrote:
| It's for protesting. This article talks about it occurring in
| Lebanon but also some of the history behind it, and that it's
| fallen out of favor with some due to environmental impact.
|
| https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-fire-releases-our-anger-ti...
| hourislate wrote:
| He's trolling...
| pugworthy wrote:
| Yea I know - tried to craft a non-political response to a
| politically charged comment.
| mikestew wrote:
| _I don 't know why..._
|
| Do you really? Or just don't care enough to look? Because I
| took the next part of your sentence, "arabs intentionally
| burning tires", plugged it into duckduckgo, and the first link
| explained it well enough for even this ignorant American to
| understand.
| watersb wrote:
| I used to live in a tiny town with a huge pile of tires out in a
| lot next to the airstrip.
|
| It caught fire and burned all month. They couldn't extinguish the
| flames, and we lived with _heavy_ black smoke asphalt air for
| weeks.
|
| You could pile dirt on it until the fire ran out of oxygen, if we
| had autonomous earth moving equipment that could take the intense
| heat.
|
| Or you might try to shock it to smother it, but at scale that
| would have to be an air-fuel blast that would have wiped out the
| whole village.
|
| The town was especially good at blowing stuff up.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_(nuclear_test)
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energetic_Materials_Research...
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| We need to chemically dissolve old tires.
| https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2020/GC/C9GC0...
| flerchin wrote:
| How can the World's Biggest Tire Graveyard hold only 7 million
| tires? Presumably they go through that many tires roughly every
| every year or two in Kuwait.
| flerchin wrote:
| Let alone the entire world.
| tpmx wrote:
| https://www.treehugger.com/americas-tire-mountains-percent-a...
|
| Excuse the source, but it seems factually correct. It's a
| problem that was solved 30+ years ago in relatively high-
| functioning countries.
| kube-system wrote:
| Either there are many tire dumps, many are recycled, or a
| combination of both.
| traeregan wrote:
| Great question.
|
| TIL that most disposed tires, in the US at least, are used for
| all sorts of things; some are even burned intentionally for
| "pyrolysis".
|
| See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tire_recycling
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(page generated 2021-08-10 23:01 UTC)