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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: 2) by VLM on Friday September 14 2018, @08:57PM (1 child)
There is none, as the pipes slowly rust away they very slowly fail over the course of a century and usually at very slow leak rates such that the stinky stuff will result in a repair call long before an explosion.
You get large numbers of simultaneous failures by large transients.
My gas line is slowly rusting away and would have failed with a pinhole slowly getting larger and smellier in 2035 leading to replacement in 2035 without an explosion. My neighbor has a slightly newer line or less corrosive dirt and his was going to fail in 2045 with a calm little pinhole no explosion. A whomping big transient in pressure due to accident or rust jamming a regulator open or whatevs results in both my line and my neighbors line bursting completely on the same afternoon leading to a huge leak and huge fire/explosion.
The good news is this would be a safer neighborhood to move into after the mess is cleaned up... every piece of equipment that was going to slowly gradually fail over the next quarter century or more ALL failed simultaneously a couple days ago. There isn't going to be a non-accidental leak in that area due to corrosion/age for decades to come.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 15 2018, @04:35PM
Here in NY State, the iron pipe gas lines from street to house have been internally sleeved with plastic tubing, pulled through like fishing wire through conduit. In our neighborhood, this was done around 2000, for iron pipe that went in the ground in the 1950s. No idea what the expected lifetime of the plastic is supposed to be, but at least it won't rust... By the time the plastic fails, there may not be enough of the original iron pipe left to fish another plastic tube through??
At the same time they also replaced any house piping from regulator/meter that went through concrete to the gas appliances--that pipe was also slowly rusting. In our case they ran a new piece of pipe in front of the boiler & hot water heater, convenient for the gas company installers (who were jerks about it) and we had to have it re-routed when the boiler was replaced.