Vandals, youths and "rebels" routinely tap Nigeria's fuel pipelines for the much needed gasoline they can't find anywhere else. On October 17, 1998, at one brick pumping station in Ataiworo, a valve some of the vandals were siphoning from got stuck open. Gasoline came gushing from the pipeline, drawing entire villages packed down with pop bottles and buckets to collect the bounty. Then some idiot decided to play Marlboro Man and lit a fag. In Nigeria's biggest human disaster, more than 700 people were killed in the ensuing fireball. A thousand more, barely alive, lay hideously charred in the local hospital. Their families snatched them from their beds as rumors spread the pilferers would be arrested.
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