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.
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.