This week’s Odd Spot: Mobile phone base stations destroyed in army tank rampage
Tuesday, July 17th, 2007What the….!??!!
On Tech Talk Radio we’ve had Odd Spot segments which are funny, sad, tragic, bewildering, pointless, controversial, political and even perplexing.
I think that this week’s Odd Spot fits all these categories.
In Sydney on Saturday the 14th of July, a man allegedly drove over seven mobile phone base stations in a stolen army tank because “he believed mobile phone waves had ‘harmed his head’.”
The full news story is called “Tank-rampage caused by mobile phone tower radiation” and has been published by CNET.
I added a post to the official TTR blog after this week’s show, but there are heaps more photos on my Flickr account which were sent to me by an anonymous listener / contributor. This contributor works for one of the organisations which sustained damage to their network equipment.
All I can say is … well, I can’t say anything. I am without speech. The offending tank driver is obviously suffering a mental illness and it’s lucky that no-one was seriously injured. Imagine the different outcome if field technicians had been working in or on any of these base stations when the tank ploughed through them. I’ve spent countless hours at radio base sites like these and I can assure you, the last thing on your mind when you’re swapping a board or resetting a power supply is that an Armoured Personnel Carrier is about to drive through your workplace!
It’s also worth noting the resilience of the phone networks, and the “minor” effect that this incident had on subscribers. An Optus spokesman said “there had been only minimal disruptions to services”.
More news stories on the same incident:
- The Age: NSW man refused bail over tank rampage
- NineMSN
- Yahoo!7 News
- The Australian: Man goes on rampage with tank in suburbs
… plus Odd Spot audio clip from this week’s Tech Talk.
I bet you can’t wait for next week’s Odd Spot! :-\