Iowan says antique explosion unlikey at Thresher’s Reunion

The C-E-O of the “Midwest Old Thresher’s Reunion” in Mount Pleasant says there are safety features that should prevent the kind of explosion that occurred in Ohio yesterday.An antique steam-powered tractor exploded at a county fair in Ohio, killing four and injuring another 40 people. At the end of this month, over 100 steam-powered engines will be fired up when Mount Pleasant hosts the “Old Thresher’s Reunion”. Lennis Moore, the C-E-O of the event, says there are four safety features on the engines that warn an operator to switch ’em off before there’d ever be an explosion.He says there’s a pop-off valve which helps release excess steam; a steam gauge which tells the operator what the pressure is inside the engine; a waterglass which shows how much water is in the boiler; and a soft plug that blows the water into the engine’s fire box. Moore says the engines are inspected, too.This year’s “Old Thresher’s Reunion” will be held August 30th through September 3rd. Yesterday in Ohio, four men were killed and dozens injured by the metal shrapnel and hot oil that spewed from the engine that exploded.