Well despite being a very sad event, it affects many people here - Power is out all over Palo Alto.

Ah, now I get it. Palo Alto = Silicon Valley. Ok, that explains the attention.

And even if that wasn't the case Tesla Motors is followed closely by quite a few people here.

It's a car company created in the spirit and likeness of a tech startup by founders who were previously successful tech startup founders. Their upcoming IPO was already evaluated as extremely risky even for an IPO and now they have to deal with this tragedy. I think that it's a combination of all these reasons more than the proximity to silicon valley. If the company were in Germany and in the same situation, I think I'd still be interested in the story and the fallout.

A few days ago, one of the top threads was "Crime in America keeps going down, yet the American public refuses to believe it"

It's very much a human thing, getting shocked about relatively small but vivid tragedies.

Aside from the power issues affecting Palo Alto and tragic loss of life, such a story is likely to drum up speculation about how the loss of talent will affect Tesla Motors. Seeing as talking about startups (or just popular businesses) in such a fashion happens a lot on HackerNews, I really don't see this story as out of place.