In my opinion, Caputo's original error falls very nicely into that observation, David. But repeating the error after the anchor corrected it is less easily explained away. He wasn't in an especially noisy environment so I don't think he was unable to hear Rand and he didn't appear on-camera to be distracted, so my sad laughter was at his apparent failure to self-correct his knowledge.
Having been one of the guys covering the 1992 riots (the first reports of trouble were coming over KFWB on the rental car radio as I left LAX---that was on Wednesday afternoon and I flew home the following Monday having done 36 hours on live TV for the first shift, 18 for the second and 12 for the final two), I'm inclined to give Tim some slack.
In a situation like that, it's all in your head---no notes, no prep. And you're not focused completely on your work---you can't be with everything that's going on around you. At least part of your brain has to be watching out for your crew's safety and your own.
In my case, I had an AM/FM Walkman with all the presets set to either KNX or KFWB (in case it got bumped in my pocket) connected to an IFB that went into my left ear and the standard IFB (interruptible feedback), which carried the air and any messages from the live truck, KCAL's satellite desk, KTVK's satellite desk and up to five producers in KTVK's master control, some of whom just couldn't help but talk over each other, during which times I couldn't hear what the anchor was saying to me.
At minimum, Tim had the situation and the IFB to contend with.
And in far less stressful situations, I have---
many times---been unable to get an erroneous word out of my head, repeatedly referring to a municipal airport as a memorial one (thank God I wasn't covering a plane crash), to the Bureau of Reclamation as the Bureau of Land Reclamation and several others that are probably on a blooper reel (or ten of them) in KTVK's storage.
He got the core of it right---there was a risk of an explosion from vehicles---and he may well have meant to say "battery" but his mouth kept saying "gas tank".