Whose Antecedent? Pronoun Seeks Logical Connection

You know what a pronoun is, right? It's sort of a generic word that stands for a specific person, place, or thing. In the examples below, the pronouns are in italics:

• Belinda teetered on the edge of the diving board. She was afraid to jump.
• There must be two hundred boats out on the lake. They should head back to shore before the big storm strikes.

It makes sense that pronouns agree with their antecedents. If you're talking about Belinda, you wouldn't want to refer to her as him unless you're trying to confuse your listener or reader. About those two hundred boats—you wouldn't refer to them as it. If the antecedent is plural, any pronoun that refers to it must also be plural.

So why is it so common to see sentences like the following?

• On a quiet evening in 1950, the community was rocked by the explosion of their city hall.

The plural pronoun their refers to the singular noun community. The sentence should read

• On a quiet evening in 1950, the community was rocked by the explosion of its city hall

or, better yet,

• On a quiet evening in 1950, the explosion of City Hall rocked the community.

Much better. Yes?