blarneystone
spending too much on rocks
Rocks in my head
Member since March 2010
Posts: 307
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Post by blarneystone on Feb 18, 2007 9:58:24 GMT -5
That's what I was asking myself yesterday evening when I heard it... But there wasn't a cloud in the sky. It was so strong that it shook the house.. I was in the garage so I opened the door and saw the orange glow of the smoke cloud just starting to rise over the houses to the North of mine. Something just blew up! ..not more than a few miles from my house! The wind was strong out of the North so I was down wind... about 5 min. after the initial explosion a light rain of debris began to fall.. What appeared to be small fragments of concrete and pebbles showered down from the sky. It's all over every thing this morning, the ground is crunchy.... It was kind of freaky to say the least..... www.click2houston.com/news/11044304/detail.htmlwww.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/4562211.htmlDan |
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Post by BAZ on Feb 18, 2007 11:07:30 GMT -5
Wow, I'll bet that is a sound you won't soon forget. Good thing nobody was hurt. That bulldozer operator should have shut his engine off, being the only source of ignition around. Working with Propane that is the first thing I think of during a leak, where are the ignition sources and how fast can I extinguish them.
El Paso's Transwestern line is less than 2 miles from our house. Most of it is underground but anyone can drive along the road and potentially muck up the pipe. After hearing this story I'd feel better if it was a little more secure, but the line is going through public land. (national forest)
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Post by lonewolfrockhound on Feb 18, 2007 11:56:24 GMT -5
I lived in Spring Branch in the late 70's doing rough framing for my BIL. We'd get jobs sometimes that would be in Pasadena and further SE along the Gulf Freeway. Man o man all there is there is oil refineries. I've never seen anything like it. I'm shocked they don't have more accidents like this.
Houston was always just wayyyy too humid for this West Texas boy. The hottest, sweatiest, nastiest days of my life were in Houston....lol
In Summer, you break a sweat walking out of your front door to get in the car.
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Post by lbowman1 on Feb 18, 2007 13:21:39 GMT -5
Another miracle that no one was killed. There's been a few of those in the news the last few days. It's encouraging in an odd sort of way. I hate to see bad things happen but it's nice to get to hear about the good parts for a change.
Lonewolf, it's always humid here in the Summer too. If it would rain as much as people around here sweat we'd have it made.
Lori
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Post by rockyraccoon on Feb 19, 2007 0:40:14 GMT -5
dan it's lucky nobody got hurt.
baz what would be the reason that they didn't get this under control in a 4-5 hr time frame?
kim
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Post by BAZ on Feb 19, 2007 8:47:45 GMT -5
The only way to extinguish a gas fire is to shut down the gas source, probably took a meeting of guys with ties to decide which valve to close!  |
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blarneystone
spending too much on rocks
Rocks in my head
Member since March 2010
Posts: 307
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Post by blarneystone on Feb 19, 2007 9:01:46 GMT -5
According to the news the 31" natural gas pipe-line was not at full capacity... it could've been much worse. Oh ...and this took place on the west side of town.. not anywhere near an oil refinery. A bulldozer driver ruptured the line and then abandoned the dozer with the motor still running. The explosion occured several hours later... That's life in the big city I guess... |
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KG1960
has rocks in the head
Member since August 2008
Posts: 512
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Post by KG1960 on Feb 19, 2007 9:11:37 GMT -5
This reminds me of an incident that I inspected the day after. It was at a propane business that filled the tank trucks that then delivered the propane to your house (if you had a propane tank in your back yard) and filled the propane cylinders you might use for your BBQ grill. There was a fire and explosion in the area where they loaded the 20 to 100 lbs cylinders. I saw tops and bottoms of exploded cylinders and some flattened pieces of metal that I eventually realized were the side walls of the cylinders. Nice picture to have in mind when using your BBQ. There were some four inch I-beams bent and ripped out of their concrete footing. This business was located right along a major highway and a residential area on the other side. The resulting fire melted some of the vinyl siding on a garage at one of the houses.
Fortunately they weren't loading any trucks at the time and the two 30,000 lbs storage cylinders were not involved, otherwise there would have been houses leveled.
About pipelines: Ever see a map of your state showing natural gas and petroleum product lines? The one for Illinois looks like a road map with all of the lines shown.
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stefan
Cave Dweller 
Member since January 2005
Posts: 14,113
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Post by stefan on Feb 19, 2007 9:28:40 GMT -5
BA-BOOMM-- Glad no one was injured- but it puzzles me as to why the guy driving the dozer didn't tell anyone- or why it took them so long to shut off the gas??
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Post by takilasunrise on Feb 19, 2007 9:33:01 GMT -5
The driver probably had a hang-over or something, he didn't want to get busted! Dah......I'm sure they made him to a blood/urine test after that!
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