We Have A Potential Code Black, Boys and Girls...

[Acela150]

As rapid push notifications came in on my iPhone this evening. One of them was about a possible explosive device going off near North Philadelphia. AKA Code Black. Trains were lightly affected by this but it has been in the news. http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2013/02/01/breaking-crews-investigating-explosion-in-north-philadelphia/

No rent a cops were injured during the response.. :lol:

 

[Ryan]

Wow, it's a good thing the TSA might have maybe searched some of the bag on that train, that completely prevented someone from using a larger charge to drop the bridge in front of a speeding train!

 

[Acela150]

http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2013/02/01/explosion-on-bridge-in-north-philadelphia-caused-by-thermic-event/

Here's an update. Thermic Event set off our code black.

 

[sechs]

Someone want to insert a comma into the title so as not to sound racist?

 

[NW cannonball]

http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2013/02/01/explosion-on-bridge-in-north-philadelphia-caused-by-thermic-event/
Here's an update. Thermic Event set off our code black.

"Thermic event" ? -- from the cited news story it seems it was - more like -- "salty icicle shorted catenary to ground, causing steam explosion"

Thermic event - sounds like "star Wars"

"Thermic event" as far as I can tell, is something that never was named so before now. A whole new word for something that probably happened. It will be interesting to learn a definition of what did happen. But "thermic event" is even less well defined than the recent phrase "wardrobe malfunction"

So - "thermic event" is a new phrase with no definition.

Wondering what actually happened.

[edit] yes I searched public and obscure and university sources and could not find a definition for "thermic event" .

 

[Henry Kisor]

"Thermic event" sounds like a favorite weather term in my neck of the woods (Chicago area): "winter precipitation event." "Ice" and "snow" are no longer adequate. How about "short caused by an icicle"?

Did the original thread title omit the comma? Whoops!

 

[Phil S]

Dear Boys and Girls -- Yes, indeed, I'm impressed. No hits because 99.9% of us who deal with such things call them "thermal events", for which Google gives 57 million hits (or some such). When you quote "thermic event" and do "-thermal -bridge" you drop from nn million to 333, most of which refer to just a few posts/stories/, whatever. Yes, indeed, why learn anything when you can just invent a new term? Oh yes, that's how we got "rain event" instead of "rain" or "rainstorm", "seismic event" instead of "earthquake", "root growth occurs" instead of "roots grow" -- help, someone hit the stop button, please?

 

[Alexandria Nick]

I spend, professionally, a lot of time translating engineer speech into regular human speech. And its the sort where they have to make up new terms all the time because there just aren't terms for the things they're doing. Nothing really fazes me any more, but "thermic" didn't really trigger "thermal expansion" in my brain. I made a beeline to "thermite." Although some of those (specifically seismic event) are more accurate and, therefore, correctly used. All earthquakes are seismic events but not all seismic events are earthquakes.