Yes, I don't want to speculate, but would hope that, for whatever happened, the affected people were notified, and all the appropriate safety officer processes

Yes, I don't want to speculate, but would hope that, for whatever happened, the affected people were notified, and all the appropriate safety officer processes were followed up on. Or, the story might have started a bit like when grandkids ask grandpa how he got that arm injury, and instead of telling the troubling story about shrapnel in the war, or the car crash, he tongue in cheek tells a fantastic tall tale of fishing, when along comes a bear who wanted to eat his fish, chock full of lessons. That could've been a goal with students: if one ran out of real-world case studies to drive home laser safety practices, a semi-plausible, if over-the-top, narrative of how a not-unlikely cavalier mistake could become a clusterfudge, with the story of course hitting all the safety practices they were just told about. There would normally be verbal cues as to the kind of story, and there'd be the context of telling, both of which are lost in blog posts.