E-mail late last night from a friend living NNW of Ft. Worth --

"The loudest consistent sound I have ever heard took over the house. I thought it was thunder for the first second. WEIRD thunder after the second second. A jet fighter about to crash down into my house the third second. Everyone in the neighborhood ran outside and we all watched the sky like superstitious natives under an F-16. 10 minutes later it was still so loud as to shake the house. 30 minutes later more muted, but still loud. Local Sheriff just came by to say the gas line exploded just north of here and gas will not be available for at least 8 hours."

Several weeks ago a backhoe broke a gas main here (NE of Atlanta). 10 lanes of I-85 (5 NB, 5 SB) were shut down for about 12 hours, including the evening rush. Luckily there was no explosion, no fire.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), January 28, 2000

Answers

Great posts Tom!! These two posts from yesterday may add perspective:

LA: 20-inch gas main blows. Officials say weather probably not to blame

http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002Qpm

Scotland: Families Back Home After Gas Scare

http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002QoF

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), January 28, 2000.

Tom, just got off the phone with PJ...they have fixed the line but now the process of going house to house to turn the gas back on is in process...it's 11:40, about 30 degrees, and they are using one small electric heater. She's really not happy that they were unable to get the landlord to allow a propane heater. Probably everyone will be back on line by the end of the day.

-- Shelia (shelia@com.com), January 28, 2000.

E-mail today from northern Ontario--

Seven or eight years ago the same thing happened just north of here - the transcontinental natural gas line blew up. It was a big bang, all right, but the sensors upstream and downstream from the break noticed the sudden pressure differential and shut the upstream valve pretty quickly, so only the residual gas between the valve and the break burned off. It was still a pretty bright fire (this happened at night) but there wasn't any 10 minute roar as [this report] describes.

The line paralleled the TransCanada Hwy (Hwy 11) - the scary part is that up here on the Shield the folks that install the pipeline cover it with broken rock - each one a foot or so in diameter - in order to keep the line from floating. When the line blew it threw rocks for hundreds of yards. Fortunately it happened around 1 or 2 in the am and there wasn't any traffic on the hwy at the point of the blast.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), January 28, 2000.