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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 shortscreen on Saturday September 15 2018, @09:42AM
The big plastic bricks that used to come with the Atari and Commodore contained a transformer to turn 120VAC into a lesser AC voltage, followed by a rectifier/regulator to turn it into 5VDC. These things were not very efficient and only put out 10W or so. A switching power supply is more complicated, but more efficient. Instead of controlling the output voltage by dissipating the excess as waste heat, it feeds a high frequency into a big capacitor and varies the duty cycle to maintain the charge. It's like trying to keep your speedometer at 60mph but instead of holding the accelerator pedal steady you repeatedly floor it and then let off, 100,000 times per second.