Word: infernos
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...explosions and the fireball that last week reduced a Phillips Petroleum Co. plastics plant near Houston to a blackened maze. "It was like being inside a bomb," said purchasing agent Clay Howell, who was knocked out of his chair 350 yds. from the blasts. Trying to stop the inferno was "like spitting in the ocean," said Houston fireman Joseph Phillips. Twenty-two employees were either killed or presumed dead...
...well-drilled 585-man fire department proved all but useless: broken mains left the city without water. Scattered blazes soon converged into fire storms that gobbled up huge swaths of the city. The inferno spread despite desperate attempts to create firebreaks by dynamiting whole blocks of homes and businesses. Writer Jack London, who lived in Sonoma County, said what everyone saw: "I knew it was all doomed...
Whether as a pro quarterback or a political pro, Jack Kemp has always been nimble and quick. Those qualities came in handy last week, as he dealt with the scandal at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which has billowed from a candlestick into an inferno. Before celebrating his 54th birthday with 54 cakes from admiring employees, the beleaguered HUD chief wryly conceded, "When I first took the nomination from President Bush, I wanted to make HUD a high-profile agency. I don't think this is what I had in mind...
...campaign, presidential candidates were forced to refute publicly rumors of homosexuality, mental illness, illegal-drug use and extramarital affairs. Yet the Donna Rice episode, following months of pious denials of womanizing by Gary Hart, can only have strengthened the public's cynical suspicion that smoke inevitably signals an inferno of secret scandal. Hart's dramatic downfall was an embarrassing spectacle, especially for all the journalists who missed the story. Pam Maples, a political reporter for The Rocky Mountain News in Denver, expressed a typical reaction: "This paper has tended to be very conservative about rumors. After the Gary Hart story...
...question remains: How clean a regime in Washington should Americans demand? It is difficult to extract general rules of conduct from the Tower inferno because so many of the facts remain in dispute. Certainly America cannot afford a Defense Secretary with an untreated drinking problem. The issue is how closely this description fits Tower. There are also legitimate concerns raised by the widespread, but not unequivocally documented, tales of Tower's predatory behavior toward women. If true, the allegations of sexual high jinks seem to reflect a pattern of reckless and perhaps unbalanced behavior that should disqualify Tower for such...