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An estimated 60 to 80 fires, 3 explosions, and numerous gas leaks were reported last night in the towns around Lawrence, MA (north of Boston). The incident has been linked to lines operated by Columbia Gas of Massachusetts. Columbia Gas has not released an official cause yet, but MEMA (The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency) and some of the local firefighters have speculated that the cause was an over-pressurized gas line. Columbia was conducting planned upgrades on the lines at the time of the incident. One person has been killed; 25 more have been injured.
I was listening to the fire radio as it happened and it sounded like complete chaos -- it was just the dispatch, but there was not a single moment of silence as they scrambled to get crews to all of the affected areas and coordinate the response across four separate towns (Lawrence, Andover, North Andover, and Methuen.) The local first responders were initially asking residents to shut off their gas lines; this quickly changed to calls for all Columbia Gas customers to evacuate, which then increased to an order for immediate evacuation of the entire area. Overnight police and fire officials were going door-to-door enforcing the evacuation, and it is not known at this time when residents may be allowed to return. The electric service has been shut down to the entire area to limit possible sources of ignition, and officials have stated there are over 8000 homes which need to be individually inspected before the residents can return.
So far, Columbia Gas has not provided any confirmation or explanation of the exact cause of this disaster...but I'm sure we've got some people here who have some speculation to offer...
The local Eagle Tribune has a number of articles with further information, and there's limited coverage in national sources like CNN.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 14 2018, @07:22PM (5 children)
Cyber warfare, someone hacked the utility and pumped the pressure really high.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday September 14 2018, @08:43PM
>Columbia was conducting planned upgrades on the lines at the time of the incident
It might be the hypothetical hacker gained control during/thanks to the upgrades, but its 10x more likely somebody f.ed up the upgrade.
Anyway in a well designed system garbage from the PC side due to hacking and or programming error should not only be considered but expected. We are taking too many shortcuts with the infrastructure.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday September 14 2018, @09:02PM
Interestingly you can cause a lot more damage dropping output to zero momentarily. Its not just all those residential pilot lights going out (and some not, leading to kaboom) but think of natgas peaking plants, knock all those out at once on a hot summer day (not today) and you could take out an entire electrical grid, I bet. Hows your blackstart capability? Just kidding, I'm sure they'd load shed entire cities rather than have to blackstart a nuke, LOL.
Energy, not just natgas but extraction in general or public utilities or all that stuff, is a fascinating field to study. And invest in. Maybe not as popular as computers, but cool technology and engineering none the less. There's probably 10x as many old time phone phreaks who know the legacy phone system as there are ... amateur energy enthusiasts or whatever.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday September 14 2018, @10:30PM (1 child)
Somebody watched too much "Live Free or Die Hard" recently, eh?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 14 2018, @10:46PM
Nah just didn't pay enough attention to see that they rolled out an upgrade. Definitely seems the most plausible reason.
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Monday September 17 2018, @03:58AM
Reminds me of that lovely opening dialogue from Clerks 2...
Randal Graves: [after the fire at the Quick Stop] Terrorists?
[Dante shakes his head]
Randal Graves: I left the coffee pot on again, didn't I?
[Dante nods]