saw this on another forum, dont know how much truth there is to it but the pics are crazy…
[quote=“HMT-Admin”"]
There is a law in the USA (and Canada) requiring
that you call for underground utility locations
before you do any excavation.
The pictures below are a result of a farmer using
a post hole digger without calling for “locates”
and he hit an underground, high-pressure cross
country gas pipe.
Had to be one of those gas powered augers, either free-standing or on a tractor.
Supposedly there was no trace of the farmer or his equipment…
It also took out 2 homes…
Take a look for yourself…
must have def been pretty beefy of a digger to do that… unless he wanted to do it on purpose.
i do oil pipeline jobs from time to time, and that shit is usually pretty damn thick wall.
but since it’s a gas pipeline i don’t know much about those.
don’t get those too often.
Man, too bad there are no pictures of the fireball. It must have been insane.
I watched the guys operating a back hoe hit a gas line over at main and spindrift. You could hear the hissing from our office about 300 yards away. The worst part was it was the national fuel guys doing the digging when they did their major renovations 4 years ago. They’re the ones you call to see where to dig! It was just dumb luck it didn’t explode in the 10’minutes or so it took them to shut it off.
I called the number when I put my fence up. Everyone showed up or gave the all clear… Found a 12" Storm sewer running through my yard unmarked… luckilly I knew it was there from when they replaced it. They just never came to mark the thing. Gotta be careful no matter what when you dig.
For anyone who isn’t into link clicking, that is an explosion from a gas pipeline, but not caused by a farmer digging. It was a 30" pipeline with natural gas at 800 psi (for reference, when it comes into your house it’s at about 0.25 psi) installed in the 1950’s. It does span across the country, but not in one straight solid run or anything crazy like that. It goes through various pumping stations, branches, valves, etc. But it is a main supply line that spans the country at 800 psi.
The pipe failed mechanically. Basically it rusted and broke. The ignition was probably caused by the gas hitting a crazy high velocity when the pipe broke and released all that pressure and the resulting particulate collisions in the high velocity gas stream causing a spark.
My father is currently working on a project redoing water mains for the city of Buffalo not because they really need to be done, but because they have no clue where the fuck they are run underneath the ground. A lot of our older utilities were done when a liquid lunch was common and what was drawn on paper is not what happened in reality.
