2d ago

Toxic chlorine cloud near Barcelona confines more than 160,000 indoors

www.theguardian.com

Spanish authorities have told more than 160,000 people near Barcelona to stay indoors after a fire at an industrial warehouse released a toxic cloud of chlorine over a wide area.

The blaze, in the coastal city of Vilanova i la Geltrú, south of Barcelona, started at dawn on Saturday in a warehouse storing pool cleaning products, the regional fire service said.

“If you are in the zone that is affected do not leave your home or your place of work,” the Civil Protection Service said on social media.

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10h ago

Toxic chlorine cloud near Barcelona confines more than 160,000 indoors

www.theguardian.com /world/2025/may/10/toxic-chlorine-cloud-near-barcelona-confines-tens-of-thousands-indoors

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2d ago

Spain | Toxic chlorine cloud near Barcelona confines more than 160,000 indoors

www.theguardian.com /world/2025/may/10/toxic-chlorine-cloud-near-barcelona-confines-tens-of-thousands-indoors

11 comments

These WW1 reenactments are getting out of hand.
- I guess most of WW1's facilities handling chemicals had better safety than the average Spanish commercial unit in 2025. I've worked in Spain for almost a year and as great as Spain is, really, the utter neglectance of anything protecting you from falling into your death, gettng electrocuted, run over, flattened by something falling off a crane and any unnecessary, awful way of geting killed is quite unnerving. It's not that I haven't actually seen it fucking happen. The bloody risk (loose handrail) was obvious for anyone but noone cared - until somebody came to death.
- General Smedley Butler in 1936 thought that the war to end all wars would be carried out by massive scale gas attacks. 7 years later the nukes would drop.
  
  Well, officers tend to prepare and fight based on the previous war. Because you can't really plan for something that you don't know exist yet.
  But then there are those who manage to adapt anyway. They do reasonably OK. (The average officer).
  And then there are those who manage to innovate on top of that. They tend to do pretty well. (Famous officers)
  And then there are donkeys leading lions, such as Field Marshall Haigh who still insisted on cavalry charges against machine gun equipped trenches as part of the battle of the Somme.
  Being unprepared for the future is understandable, but outright clinging to methods rendered obsolete in the previous century takes a special kind of out of touch chateau general.

People in the future are gonna need to wear a full face mask with a bottle of oxygen, and then there will still be anti-maskers saying: "fAcE mAsKs dOnT wOrK!" while coughing out the polluted air
- You know what really really really really really bothers me about some of those people? They were loudly talking about how this is just a test of control and they can see who'll obey the new world order and who'll rebel and they're loudly and proudly rebelling telling anyone who'll listen.
  If it really is a test and they're making a list, why put yourself on the "kill this prick first" list?

I swear I never read White Noise to the end, but then when I watched the movie I kept remembering the scenes from it as they happened until the very end,

How can "indoors" save you from chlorine gas?
- There is minimal air exchange between the indoors and outdoors when all the windows and doors are closed. There is still some, because obviously you can stay in a building even without HVAC for a long time. But it's slow enough that something as reactive as chlorine gas will react with other materials before it reaches you.

*Barthelona
- Only according to the Castillan occupiers. Not the Catalans who live there.

11 comments