We have to say we’re a little disappointed in Vancouver’s two major daily newspapers, the Vancouver Sun and the Province — even more disappointed than we normally are.
Wednesday afternoon’s chemical fire at the Port of Vancouver seemed like a perfect fit for both papers’ “If it burns/bleeds trichloroisocyanuric acid, it leads” mantra. To say nothing of the four-alarm fire’s picturesque billows of smoke, evacuation notices, warnings for residents to stay indoors, haz-mat crews and fire trucks — the equivalent of Viagra for a daily newspaper.
Sadly, the Sun relegated the blaze to a few meagre paragraphs on its front page and spilled it onto page 7, kitty corner to an ad for bras. Sure the headline read “Health fallout feared after smoke billows from chemical fire,” but a story on transit ridership got more play on the front page, and to the best of our knowledge transit riders aren’t very flammable. Even more dismaying, the Province went with a picture of hot house tomatoes on its cover. Hot house tomatoes! Unless those tomatoes will give us cancer because they were potentially infected with noxious fumes from Wednesday’s chemical fire, they have no business being on the cover of the Province in our humble opinion.
And let’s not forget all the potential headlines that both papers ignored: “Smoke on the water,” “Chemical reaction,” “Port land blazers,” “Cloudy with a chance of death.” Just shameful.
