You take things for granted and..

I was quite happy just a hour ago, surfing net, reading comics. Then I checked my Inbox and found mail from my dad, who is currently vacationing in Mexico and living with a friend of his;

Hi,
I was the weekend, till Saturday, at San Antonio, where the heat was 40 degrees. Then we drove to Durango through Piedras Negras. We had to change our course, when we found a burning lorry in front of us (100m). We waited a while, but when the driver came by and told that he was shipping 22 tons of dynamite.
They springled water over the lorry and the fire seemed to be under control. We still decided to leave for safety's sake, and while we were eating 5 km's away we heard a loud explosion; 30something died and 70 got hurt. The group included firemen, police, reporters and inhabitants of nearby houses.

The crater was 4m deep and 10m wide.

We drove the motorway through the night to get here. Tomorrow we are going to Mazatlan to beach vacation, where I'm going to teach Jaime to fish.

I was quite disoriented after reading this, but decided to check if maybe there was something about this in Google News. This was the first entry with the searchword "dynamite";

Mexico Dynamite Truck Explosion Kills 34

By JUAN MONTANO – 3 hours ago

PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Mexico (AP) — A dynamite-laden truck exploded after colliding with another vehicle on a busy highway in northern Mexico's coal country, killing at least 34 people, including three reporters at the scene, state and federal officials said.
[...]
Shortly after the crowd arrived, the wreckage caught fire, and the dynamite exploded, sending a ball of fire into the sky that consumed nearby cars and left a 10-by-40 foot crater in the concrete, said Maximo Alberto Neri Lopez, a federal police official.

He said more than 150 people were injured.

My dad was there. He could easily have been one of the 150 people, if he wouldn't have wandered off (mostly out of boredom, I would say, more than from safety.. but I may judge him too harshly). It doesn't make it much better that the email starts with a nice tidbit about weather and ends in the plan to teach fishing. Like this incident was nothing..

I might be in shock. It's 1:15 and I should be sleeping, but my heart is racing. I wonder how the other people in my family will react, when they check their Inboxes.

I sent dad a reply and told how happy I was that I still had him. You take these things for granted. And I can't think that last Wednesday, the last time I had proper time to spend with him, I dismissed him to go watch telly...