Terrible tragedy. Corruption is difficult to overcome. It takes strong leadership, transparency, and the desire to break the cycle of impunity against those who are corrupt.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out how you safely “drill” into a pipeline carrying gasoline.
I guess those folks didn’t either. Amazing and sad what poverty drives people to…
Fire needs oxygen. So I can imagine how you would do it. And at 40 incidents a day it must be pretty well industrialized.
But just in case you wondered why there’s government regulation of pipelines…
When I was in college I had a very short gig with a guy converting a garage into an apt.
One day he tapped into the gas line. I guess the valve was stuck open so his method was to disconnect the customer line from the meter, drill into the customer line, mount the new line to it, then reattach the customer line, all while gas was spewing out of the meter. 
I think that was the last day I worked for him. Jaysus. One of several experiences which convinced me that Someone still wanted me to walk the earth.
Cc @paulw
I watched while an Old Italian Plumber attached a new stove in my apartment in new york. Very similar, except he put his thumb over the open pipe to keep the gas in while he did his other stuff. (Since residential gas is only one or half a psi, this is not quite as lunatic as it seems when you watch.)
One of the earlier reports I read on this before the explosion, said the gangs were so good at this, that they would locate a pipeline and build a an entire prefab warehouse on top of it, to tap the pipe so nobody could see what they were doing.
A family member visited Cozumel recently, and there was no sign of gas shortages. Also plenty of armed military to keep the peace. They’re protecting the tourist areas. You’d never know any of this was going on, from places like that.
Nigeria, Ukraine, the pipeline fuel theft story. For some reason, this brought back the homemade gasoline stories from Chechnya back in the 1990s.
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I have a mix of emotions - both because of what he did and impressed he could do the work one handed. Some days I feel I need 3. #respect.
You have to find non-flammable gasoline.