It was a clash of images on Sunday in St. Paul, MN when a local man, Tuan Pham, awoke to see his beloved, custom-made Jesus statue in flames. According to family, someone took wood from a nearby pile and used a spray can to ignite a fire at the base of Pham’s 7-foot ode to Christ. It’s statue that has been controversial from the beginning: Local station KARE reports : It may have burned for awhile; Pham’s daughter took pictures of her father trying to knock down the flames. Fire investigators were going over the garden a few hours later. If they find evidence of arson, they are expected pass the case on to police. “It pains me, it’s very upsetting. This means a lot to him. This is where he finds joy and where he spends a lot of his time,” Phan said about his retired father-in-law. The statue took months to ship. It is a replica of a massive one Pham helped build more than 40 years ago in his hometown of Vung Tau, Vietnam. Pham says he was jailed for his catholic beliefs before he fled the country for Minnesota. The statue was put in place last October and a month later, Phan says, the city received a complaint about it. The family requested a variance after officials found it was not the required 40 feet from the bluff line, but that request was denied by the city council a few days before the fire. The family wonders if the fire was racially or religiously motivated, wondering why someone would try to burn marble; guessing it was merely meant to send a message. “Why does somebody need to go this far?” Phan wondered.
More here:
Jesus Statue Set Ablaze in Minn.
At LAT , ” Oil Platform Explodes off Louisiana “: The opening scene was all too familiar. Black smoke rising from a burning oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico and workers plucked from the sea. But Thursday’s fire on an oil production facility 100 miles off the Louisiana coast appears to have ended without disaster. None of the 13 workers on board the platform was injured. The Coast Guard found no evidence of an oil leak, and by Thursday afternoon the fire was out. The accident — the cause is unknown and under investigation — happened a little more than four months after BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig blowout, which killed 11 workers and resulted in the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. Thursday’s fire sent shudders along the Gulf Coast, but Houston-based Mariner Energy Inc. reported that it was able to shut in the wells connected to the oil and gas platform, averting leaks. “Automated shutoff equipment on the platform safely turned off the flow of oil and gas from the platform’s seven producing wells before the fire occurred and the crew evacuated,” the company said in a news release. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said the company told officials that the fire burned an oil product stored on the platform — unlike the BP drilling rig blaze, which was fed by an uncontrollable gush from its blown-out well. “That’s a very important point,” Jindal said. Thursday’s accident occurred farther west than the BP blowout, on an oil and gas platform in shallow water south of Terrebonne Bay, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement. Coast Guard officials said they received a call at 9:18 a.m. Central time that the platform was engulfed in flames. Crews on a nearby oil facility reported seeing an explosion on the platform. The 13 workers, wearing red floatation suits, apparently leaped into the water, which is about 340 feet deep. They were picked up by a supply vessel and flown by helicopter to an onshore hospital. Mariner said were no reported injuries. See also Memeorandum .
Go here to read the rest:
Another Offshore Oil Rig Explosion in Gulf of Mexico
