"J. van Baardwijk" wrote:
>
> At 11:16 16-10-01 -0200, Alberto Monteiro wrote:
>
> >But something similar to what happened in Goiania, Brazil, about 15 years
> >ago: a pair of thieves broke into an abandoned medical center, stole a
> >beautiful powder that had its own light, and contaminated 50 people with
> >Cs-137 [*]
>
> The word "abandonded" suggests that the building was no longer in use. That
> usually means that the last occupants left and took everything with them.
> So, if the building was already abandonded, why was there still a supply of
> Cesium in the building? Was it overlooked when all the other stuff was
> moved out, or do you have a different interpretation of the word "abandonded"?
Sometimes when a building is abandoned, stuff gets left behind, either
intentionally, because the abandoners didn't want to deal with moving
it, or inadvertantly, because they were in a hurry to leave.
My mom left a few vaguely useful items when she moved, because they'd
been overlooked until the time at which we *had* to get out of there
(electricity being scheduled for cut-off, needing to get to the place
she was moving *to* before the movers showed up with all her stuff,
etc.) and there was no sense in dumping those items on the neighbor who
had very kindly offered to take the last few bags of trash to the dump
for her, and no room in the car for them, either. I don't know if that
counts under "abandoning" the building, but it's the best real-life
example I could come up with. It's not quite equivalent to the period
where we had to put up with Jack's car in our garage after Jack moved
out due to his wife not wanting a non-functioning car cluttering up her
new garage; the car was removed when I put my foot down about it awhile
later, since Jack had a garage and the friends who wanted to store some
stuff with us didn't have any other free alternatives. (We still don't
know whose laundry basket it was we ended up with, and it wasn't until
this summer (9 years later?) that I decided we needed to get rid of
*that*.... I guess the laundry basket was abandoned, but useful, at
least until it fell apart in too many spots.)
Julia
