Negligence and Cost Saving: The Carlsbad Pipeline Disaster 2000 | Short Documentary
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- Опубликовано: 19 июн 2024
- On Saturday, August 19, 2000, a 30-inch-diameter natural gas pipeline operated by El Paso Natural Gas Company exploded next to a campaite along the Pecos River near Carlsbad, New Mexico.
12 people would lose their lives…
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#disaster #Documentary #History #TrueStories
Some fun words: Pipeline Disaster, Carlsbad New Mexico, Gas disaster, Disaster management
As a child I woke up to Saturday morning cartoons.
As an adult, I'm waking up to Saturday morning disaster videos.
Same😊
It’s the natural progression
I was thinking the same thing myself. Back then it was cartoons and cereal, now it's Plainly Difficult and coffee.
Saturday morning death marathon, if you're like me, somewhat new and sometimes remember that Plainly Difficult also has old vids to binge lmao
Much higher production values than the pap I watched as a lad. 😂
I like how the staff member is driving a Ford Pinto. 😂
Yep! 😊
That was my thought as well.
Hope it doesn't get rear ended it might become a disaster story in itself.
Yeah, that was a nice touch! 😀
Fun fact: he also kept his nitroglycerin tablets loose in his pocket...
Well Theres Your Problem just did a bonus ep on the Pinto lol
Diagram: "Not to scale."
Me: "That seems reasonable."
Diagram: "Not accurate."
Me: ".... That seems reasonable."
Diagram: "Not complete"
@@chri-k "That seems reasonable."
Disaster scale: 4
People dead: 12, with at least 6 dying pretty awful deaths
Me: "This disaster scale doesn't seem reasonable" 😮😢
@@jonslg240his scale is number of people who died. I agree that if it was a percentage scale, this would be 100.
A friend of mine knew some of the victims relatives in Carlsbad while we were there from 2013-2021. She recognized this story because Carlsbad is a small town and everyone knows everything about everyone.
The families made out like bandits with the settlements.
Tragic as it was, those families would still be broke if the victims had just camped somewhere else.
Note to self: Do not camp near energy infrastructure sites.
Very wise words
I always feel slightly uncomfortable about staying under 380kV high voltage lines. They rarely fail just randomly, but if they do, it's gonna be a Bad Time.
Hard to avoid in many areas. Take a look at the vast areas of oil and gas basins like San Juan, Anadarko, etc. You can pull up maps like that and find they cover vast areas, many in wildlife and recreational areas.
@@user-lh5re8jh7u So avoid the area?
I mean, it's hard to avoid digging into radioactive soil at Chernobyl... So you don't dig there, instead you find other areas where digging isn't as hazardous.
@RealCadde Strawmanning are you? The point is that gas and oil lines criss cross all over the US. If you are in the US, chances are you are on top of one or within a 1/4 mile of one.
Who said camping is boring 😔
My bro in law and I were doing grounds maintenance for a huge subdivision years ago. He took off on the mowing tractor and didn't return. This was before cell phones. I took off in the truck to see if he was screwing off. I pulled up and saw the tractor stopped under the tree line and bro standing in the middle of the small field. He was a big boy, 6'3", about 285 pounds. He had one foot on something a couple inches off the ground. "WTF you doing?" I yelled. He raised his foot and a whoosh of gas flew up. The mower deck had sheared off an unmarked pop up. His quick thinking prevented evacuation of a neighborhood. First thing he wanted after the fire dept and gas company got there was to GTFO of there, and have a smoke 😂 He'd been standing on the leak for almost an hour, hoping I'd come check on him. Gas is dangerous!
Just a few months ago, someone ruptured a 22 inch gas pipeline running at 750 psi, in Whitman County WA . Luckily it didn't ignite, or the equipment operator could have been cremated. As it was, several town in the Idaho-Washington border area lost gas service from this for several days, during cold weather.
@@mikeholmstrom1899 wow. O am from WA and never heard about that one. Freakin yikes
Man hes lucky it wasnt a high pressure line!
"NO DATA BRO IT'S STILL FUCKED" that's whats going on in my head when i cant remember wtf i studied for during an exam
meanwhile at nasa: clearly a major failure
meanwhile at space x: woop woop and cheering
I should patch my copy of ping to replace "request timed out" with that message
That’s all life is, a never ending test.
You could say they were NOT happy campers.
They were not
Credit due. Surely not proverbial happy camper.😅😅😅😅
It got intents.
More unfortunate
No, just stupid.
1:59 You know nothing good is coming when old rusty Pinto rolls over the screen...
It’s a harbinger of death
@@PlainlyDifficultQuite so.
Well, the Pinto did make other drivers far more cautious!
Kind of a self explaining mascot.
Isn't it a Simca 1307?
Your "dodgy cartoons", sense of humor, and quality of research are the reasons why I have been subscribed for years, and I am a channel member. Your viewers and myself especially look forward to these videos every week.
Totally agree with the above ⬆️ 💯
I especially love the thought bubbles! Always a hoot!
I'm also here for the music.
@DrBrown88 Right!?! I always look for the "You're stepping on my foot!" from the twin guys in HazMat suits.
Agreed
Immediately after this failure, EPNG announced they had "inspected" this pipeline a few days before. That inspection was actually an aerial overflight of that pipeline. That won't show corrosion. Also, while fixing & testing this pipeline, another corroded spot on Line 1103 was blown out during a hydrostatic test, which is a high pressure water test. That failure was on the other side of the Pecos River, before the compressor station.
Also, many of the valves on this pipeline were not able to be operated by the control center, so someone had to go out to the manually operated valves to shut off the pipeline.
This failure, plus the Bellingham WA (1999) & Lively TX (1996) fatal pipeline disasters, led to new laws to force pipelines to test their pipelines by smart pigging or hydrostatic testing.
Now that i work with a scada system almost constantly for my job, these videos always help me realize how important it is they are working properly. Basically turns into me not wanting to see my company end up in one of your videos one day!
Or if you do, you’re the guy in the orange vest saying, “That’s a Very Bad Idea.” And when it proves to be a Very Bad Idea, “Balls”
There's been several pipeline failures, where the SCADA Operator would get an alarm, and would think it's just a minor glitch in the system, so, they would clear the alarm & keep the pipeline running. In one ammonia pipeline failure, the Operator kept clearing dozens of alarms, even though one of the alarms said there was a leak detected!
Speaking of pigs. My grandfather worked on oil rigs in the 70s and 80s. He was one of like 5 people at most in the United States who could operate a "smart pig" at the time. A smart pig is basically a truck length "pig" that can scan the inside of the pipe. He would park his truck on the beach and get flown out by helicopter to whatever rig needed him
Now ILI, or smart pigs, is a 10 billion dollar industry. I've ben running smart pigs for the past five years.
@@bradpeters6076 Hmm, sounds like that industry is living high on the hog.
@@bradpeters6076 I wouldn't be surprised if you see Gerald Shovan referenced in one of the manuals
@@bradpeters6076 10 billion/ year paid to avoid much higher costs. Hence this makes a hell of a lot of sense even for >>>most
4:08 _"Balls."_
10:07 _"FFS, bro this hole?"_
_"wt u say about my mum?"_
Perfect Plainly Difficult.
😬
"Something very explody" John shows a cartoon Pinto 😂
Hey! I had a Pinto, and never had an "explody" incident. Then again, mine was a station wagon, not the hatchback model. The Pinto wagon had the gas tank ahead of rear axle, so the gas tank was better protected.
However, the car succumbed to a cracked engine block. But it DID get me all the way from Travis AFB, California to Dickinson, Texas before failing . . . . And I was able to tow a UHaul trailer all the way!
@@johndemeritt3460 Some of those Pinto station wagons were pretty cool. Did your have the striped paint job or the bubble window in the rear?
I spit out a little of what I was drinking when he said that 🤣🤣🤣
@@johndemeritt3460My Grandpa bought a small truck at one point when we had our orchard in eastern Washington from State: a 1977 Ford Courier - it was Ford’s attempt at a smaller, fuel efficient truck, and was offered with two 4-cyl engines - one was about 2 liter , and the other a 2.3 - that’s what ours had, and that was the SAME engine as the Pinto had. I share your pain, on the subject of unreliability.
Would they add that word to the OED? I'm a Yank. I have no standing to recommend.
I remember when this happened because the land I owned in Idaho had a high pressure natural gas pipeline running under it. It was a pipeline running from Canada to the south. There were two major railroad lines within a quarter mile of my house, which carried all manner of toxic materials.
We had been evacuated from a small town in 1990 when a Union Pacific car carrying sulfur dioxide developed a leak one block from our home. Sulfur dioxide turns into sulfuric acid when it contacts water like in your eyes and lungs. I still remember the burning sensation as we ran for the cars.
Nightmare fuel.
My Saturday morning is complete!
:D
I can't end the week without understanding just precarious our every day lives are thanks to industrialization and modernization. Still beats being in the jaws of a lion though.
This is my Saturday morning cartoon now.
My grandparents were evacuated from their home a few weeks back because a very high pressure gas leak was detected in a nearby gassline, and the soil around it had become saturated with water, causing it to be unstable around the joinings. The local gov immediately took action and evacuated nearby homes and businesses and put up roadblocks. At 10 p.m., the issue was resolved, and my grandparents got to sleep in their own bed.
I'm so happy with how fast and good the government reacted. It could have been a disaster, especially because there was also a gas station and an electrical plant across the street. Prevention is always better than a cleanup.
Feels odd to feel happy when I see a new video detailing a terrible disaster.
don't worry, there's plenty more natural gas where that came from
The past is the past there's nothing to feel odd about. It's over done can't be changed. And ask for the future tomorrow's not here and it's not a guarantee so it doesn't matter either. So if you are happy and here and now with this video that is all that matters. Because we have no past and we have no future we have to here and now only.
@@fishingwithkar4871 Dude I came here for death but I also got philosophy. I feel like the McDonald's employee tossed an extra nugget into my box lol
Think of it this way, you're happy to learn new information that could one day save the lives of you and your loved ones, while making sure that these disasters and their victims aren't forgotten
I'm always happy to learn something new from mistakes and disasters in a way that is not boring, yet very informative.
Your sense of humor is absolutely perfect btw
Thank you!
@@PlainlyDifficultI’ll second that! Not an easy subject to have any humor around at all, but you pull it off nicely.
@@PlainlyDifficult ngl I would love to have a printable version of that bingo card -- if there is one, I can't seem to find it
@@NathanSimonGottemerRight? I want to play along!
@@bsadewitz ye big same
I worked in the IT department of a natural gas pipeline operator around this time. Pulling pipeline historical data together from dodgy records that were 50 years old was a pain, but this was a reminder of how important the work was.
terribly sick and trying to recover while juggling a physically demanding job has me feeling so crappy.. but a PD upload is enough to help me get ready for work! let’s do this!
Pipeline companies: you can trust us! It’s safe!
The pipelines:
Lesson learned: If you're a camper looking for a camp site and you see signs warning you not to trespass on private property and/or the presence of dangerous conditions in the area (such as but not limited to natural gas pipelines) plus access to parts of the road are roped off then move on and find a different site. Poor folks didn't have to die, but they just had to camp at this spot for reasons only they could have explained but we'll never fully know why.
Sometimes you have to wonder just how far companies have to go to protect the public from themselves.
Well said, Dave.
If they had not ignored the signs, and camped half a mile away they would still be alive, and with a great after-dinner story to tell.
I imagine their campfire ignited the gas too ......
The signs warned about the off limits area - the campers were NOT trespassing anywhere off limits, but you're still gonna blame them? Would I personally camp right there, probably not, are you a total bellend - apparently yes.
@@ACME_Kinetics The signage literally says "Warning: No Trespassing. This road and right of way is private property and is not for public use". The pipeline, the road, and the land that it sits upon is private property. Yes, the campers would be considered trespassing and camping on private property. You can see in the photo that they are off the public right of way and right next to the private bridge. Why they would even want to camp anywhere near a pipeline is beyond me. Doesn't seem like a decent campsite anyway: industrial pipes spoil the scenery and I doubt fishing at that spot would've been any good anyway.
The point still stands: they should not have been there in the first place. Yes it's terrible that good people had to die but if they had chosen any other location to camp they would still be alive despite the gas leak.
These stick figure companies need to have a gladiatorial combat episode
I would watch that!
I like how John is able to mix the serious with satire to make an interesting and entertaining video . BALLS !
The first time I learned about pigs I think was a James Bond film where they used one modified for secret agent stuff to sneak 007 between Eastern and Western Europe during the cold war era. Allowing him to bypass checkpoints
I remember that!
The same thing happened one hour from where I live. The massive explosion jumped a major interstate and incinerated multiple houses. Amazingly, there were no injuries at all, just massive property destruction.
I guess they thought the pipeline would "el paso" the test... 😂😂😂
I'll see myself out... 😂
🫡
"No data bro, it's still fucked" 🤣🤣🤣
😬
Agreed that description is scary correct.
The horror of waking up to find 12 members of your family dead is beyond comprehension.
well they did camp illegally next to warning signs, so...
I knew that guy he wasn't okay after. My family took him in and took care of him after. He ended up taking his own life years later. It was so sad. He was a wonderful and caring person.
Interesting to see Carlsbad mentioned because I live over an hour away in Hobbs. We have so much oil industry stuff here that it dominates our local economy. To add to a more smaller disaster that happened in the same area. We have ranches in this area too where companies will rent out the land on those private ranches in order to drill, process, or do wtv they can. I worked for a ranch last summer where in the winter some oil processing workers forgot to close a gate to a processing station which led to over 50 cattle, both adult and young, to consume the chemicals and die. It hit that ranch hard and fucked up their spring season work. Sadly the company was being an ass and were fighting tooth and nail to not pay. All this to say is that the oil here has given us disasters like in the video and a lot smaller ones.
I hope that company had to compensate the ranch in the end
Guess the gate opened it self its range law if gate was closed you do the same period
@@davidhudson5452 if ur talking about a gate leading into a pasture, it wasn’t that. The small processing plant was inside a pasture and was gated off.
The continued reliance on natural gas & oil is shameful and will only lead to more disasters over and over again until we finally modernize.
@@ttme1234True - though thanks to the nature of our plastics industries, we (society overall) will always have some substantial need for hydrocarbons.
In the short/mid term, one thing that would help out would a mental shift away from viewing maintenance as a “cost” center, to a more “preventative” philosophy. We have plenty of data, thanks to John and many others, on how expensive unmaintained infrastructure can be in accidents - so if a maintenance dept can show a substantial reduction in those accidents, that should be viewed as healthy, and an incentive for continued consistent funding - as opposed to now, where often hands are shaken, backs are patted, congratulations all around, annnnd then the budget get ls axed in half the next FY because “clearly it’s fine, let’s put that money into a shareholder bonus”.
It’s a nasty sort of problem too - when this stuff IS found, and a disaster IS prevented, there’s every incentive to be “quiet” about it, so as to not remind everyone of the big, potentially explosive thing in their backyards.
It's hysterical the Pinto has a rusty fender. Perfect touch.
I used to work for a natural gas pipeline inspection company. Some of things I saw and did were fascinating and terrifying. Complex models were used to determine where to inspect. There are MILLIONS of kilometers of pipeline all throughout North America. Some run under the backyards of homes. Some of the remediations (aka 'fixes') were pretty substandard back in the day. One pipeline failed because of a weld where the welder ran out of welding material and decided to melt down the spoon from his lunchbox. There the weld sat buried six feet down for 50 years, until it failed and exploded, killing people.
I've also visited sites of failed NG pipelines--a set of four 36" pipes. The diameter of the charred ground was 1000 yards. The size of the twisted chunks of pipeline thrown out of the ground were similar to a humpback whale.
The major issue with pipelines is something called SCC (Stress Corrosion Cracking), microscopic cracks from pressure cycling, and inappropriate pipe coating for the moisture expected in the soil. Asphalt coating cracks in dry ground, PVC tape fails in moist ground. Failed coating = corrosion = failure of pipe wall.
And just for a comparison, your car's tires are pressurized to about 35-40 PSI. These pipelines usually are running at 900 PSI. Filled with a highly flammable/explosive gas. Every 30km or so, there is a compressor station that helps to boost the pressure or shut a valve if there's a sudden drop in pressure (if there's a pipeline failure). So generally speaking, if there is a failure in the pipeline, you'll get sometimes several dozens of kilometers of product also being dumped out into an often violent, fiery situation. And rarely is it advertized that there's a 36" NG pipeline running through your backyard...
"The welder ran out of welding material and decided to melt down the spoon from his lunchbox..." Which failure was this?
"...and inappropriate pipe coating for the moisture expected in the soil."
Does this mean we'll be seeing more of these incidents as climate change worsens? Because nothing in the environment is behaving "as expected" any more, especially not when those expectations were set over 30 years ago.
New fear unlocked. Thanks, I guess.
@@adriantallent8557 ahahaha 'climate change' another conspiracy nut job 😂
It often *is*, but ppl get so used to the little fiberglass posts they just ignore or remove them. We were farm shopping in a part of KY that hosts one of the cross country pipes in 2008 and after seeing several gas line posts, usually in the fence rows where a mower couldn’t get it, opted to cross a whole area off our search. In 2019 a section blew out near Stanford KY, killing one human, iirc a couple of cows in a shed, damaging homes and injuring several. The burned out area covered several acres. San Bruno CA was 2010, less loss of life, barely, way more property damage.
I’m weirdly happy to see this this morning, since the past week has gone by so slowly yet so quickly that we’re having trouble keeping track of the day. My dad died on Monday morning, so having something normal the following Saturday is more reassuring than you realise. Thank you as usual, but even more so right now.
Sorry for your loss bud.
hi i just wanted to leave a comment because i noticed you used an audio i've previously complained made it hard for me to hear your video; in this one, the sound on the music is low enough that i can both appreciate the music AND hear what you're saying. i just wanted to thank you for the adjustment because i know i've complained in the past. this was a great video for me, thank you for the work put into it.
When it happened, a local news report made it seem as though it was an “official” place for campers and the gas company had slid in to bury the pipe at night!
When I read about this in our local (San Diego) newspaper, it sounded like they were in an official campground. This video is the first time I've learned that it was not so.
1999, Olympic pipeline explosion, Bellingham Wa.
City park partly flooded with gasoline due to damaged pipeline.
Explosion and fire devastated the area.
Today it's a lovely park.
I've been following disaster coverage for nearly 20 years. How do I not know this story? Wow.
Love watching your videos when there's a thunderstorm outside laying down in my bed having a lazy day Just enjoying the pitter patter of rain on the window and your voice talking about disasters just love it
Happy days thank you
@@PlainlyDifficult"which is here on a map"
Thanks for adding pig pictures! The cuteness was helpful in getting through an explosion I had not heard of before
Sheesh that crater! Natural gas is no joke.
WE NEED THE BINGO CARDS!!!! And maybe an announcement stating… everyone have your bingo cards?
NTSB says: "FFS! Look at this hole bro!"😂
“What’d you say about my mum?”
Yeah, that got me too.
It ain't Saturday morning without pancakes, eggs, and disaster.
A tasty start to the weekend!
Pipeline explosions like this make me wonder where the pipelines are in my area. And how stable they are
They are everywhere. And you don’t have to fret, they are very safe. Pipeline companies work very hard (at least in western nations) to maintain the integrity of their lines.
You can find them easily using google earth, finding one pump station or pig complex is all it takes to get started then track both directions from that. Same as power stations and electrical grid
Federal regualtions require all interstate pipelines to undergo and inline inspection every five years, and every two years if the run through a major metro area. For work, I run inline inspection tools. They can detect the kind of metal loss that led to this explosion along with any other anomolies in the line.
I swear, some of this stuff you cover is just nuts to think about, from like a regular civilian standpoint the amount of shit under our feet is kind scary. I remember digging a massive hole with my brother, in the empty lot next door when he uncover a massive cable thing. Well us being kids in all, we just dug around it😂😂, wasnt till my uncoe came by to see what we were doing, told us real quick to get the hell outta the hole n to fill it back in. That was the day i learned about underground electrical cabling, n we had infact been digging around one, an had actually come pretty close to cutting through it, had i not told my brother that it was probably a bad idea. Glad he agreed with me 😅😂😂❤
We thought it was some sort old construction thing, as the lot had been a saw mill at one point or another❤
When you was talking about the pipeline I noticed he used the Ford Bento article incidents or was that just cute? That was so cute. It was unreal. Got a good laugh out of it.
remind me to be careful when picking my camping spot in New Mexico carefully
You can find the oil and gas basin maps and such online. Gas lines run through nearly every neighborhood in most areas.
Watch out for Gila Monsters too.
8:01: "...that something very explody had happened". I love videos and stories about explody things.
Meeting the lawn will have to wait another 14 minutes
Every Saturday, at or around 3 pm, I look forward to the notif that tells me about a new PD video. Have a great weekend, John!
And you thank you!
US commenters: This makes our Saturday morning
PD: Chuckles graciously in GMT
🫡👌
It’s Sunday here! Sunday morning disaster time for me
Thanks John always love to kick back every week or two and have a catch up on ya vids mate. Shout out from a sunny/overcast spring day in Blackpool.
Thanks for your awesome content, John!
love your videos! keeping me going through my exam revision :D
Another great video! Very well researched, edited, and narrated as always.
Thanks again!
Smokey Bear was found after a forest fire in the mountains North and a little West of there (closer to Roswell, NM).
Yes roughly 2.5 hours away in the Capitan mountains just outside of Capitan New Mexico.
I'm really enjoying this channel. Very interesting and informative 👍
My boss worked on this case and many more an still is we have a inspection at the end of the month. I enjoy your content
Good lord! Sitting here playing with my dog while watching this vid and at a glance that jumble of blown apart pipe at 0:43 looks like a dead and bloated hippopotamus! 😮😂 I was like: “Hmm.. Pretty sure there ain’t no Hippos in New Mexico..”. I should add that I also need glasses. Badly.
if you want another pipelines vid but slightly scandelous. You should look into the plastic gas couplings that Atmos installed on underground pipes in neighborhoods exploding all around North West Dallas
Great video as always, was chilling out yesterday listening to your "The Glades" while working.
Hope you enjoyed it!
@@PlainlyDifficult I often run it on RUclips loop for 15 minutes or a so at a time. The album is very good, but GLADES just has the ability to be listened to over and over.
You're the best! You went from all technical and professional to "something very explodey had happened."
You have an uncanny gift of making disasters hilarious. I don't know whether to laugh or cry, so I wait until the end of the day and do both😂😂❤
I find your videos deceptively easy to watch.
Another great video, thanks
looking forward to this!
John makes my Saturdays ❤
John hasn't made a video about the Los Alfaques explosion yet I think. I was 13 and i remember that I was camping when I saw the pictures in the newspaper. 😬
Thanks for the suggestion
I hope you can cover the 2009 Bozeman MT natural-gas explosion and fire. It took out a full block on main street and the fire department had to let it burn for several days while waiting for parts to fix a broken shutoff valve. The National Guard was called in for security so the police could go back to regular duties. All in all it would do well on the bingo card.
Thats a weird campsite choice.
All too common. Ground cleared. Easy access to fish. Just horrible timing. They were camped right on the line.
Thank you John
Its actually a compliment to the maintenance procedures and workers that things like this arent more common, given just how many pipelines criss-cross the world
Plainly Difficult always great content to wake up to
Love ur channel
You never miss an opportunity to fit in a 'your mum' joke 😄
It’s a British standard
I don’t think you have yet, but you should cover the disaster at cajon pass, I fell like you’d enjoy the research and making it, looking forward to it. It involves pipelines and trains, win win
I've been binging all the videos on this channel. They have been absolutely fascinating, but I'm surprised I'm not seeing a video about the Concorde Jet. Granted, I haven't made it through all the videos yet, so I might have missed it.
Our family sold gas out of the San Juan Basin since the 1940s to EPNG. It was a household name to us.
I lived/worked at the time in Malēga NM very near where this accident happened unfortunately I was on the rig and we weren't allowed off nor were we allowed near the site I personally didn't even know people were killed till you pointed it out
Great video. I love your nuclear videos. And I have a suggestion for a video. The Ocean Ranger disaster that happened off the coast of newfoundland.
Thank you for the suggestion
TY for the report as always! 7:24 🤣🤣 A pinto... with un-matching body panels... all thats missing is Sandlers' POS car playing in the background! Thanks for the laugh. ML and Blessings!
I remember this. I think this also happened in Ruidoso, NM.
Oh, thank God.Not that a campsite exploded. That I get to hearJohn's voice Been having a PTSD attack all night long and it is 7:00AM now I really need respite.🥺
Awesome channel.
I would love a documentary of the Merrimack valley explosions in mass! Right down the road from me and I would love to learn more, practical engineering did a great video on it
Thanks for the suggestion!!
Thanks for the reply mate!
I thought your bingo card could have FATIGUE also as you said near end of shift and putting on coffee. The alarms see pressure drop and yet they waited to hear of a fire and explosion to stop the pumping. That delay could be policy and procedure or fatigue. Delay in itself may have let some of the campers die of injuries.
I think they more waited because the SCADA was down. They wouldn't have been able to just call and say "SCADA is down, but we think something might have happened, shut it down".
Thanks!
Thank you!!
This is a tragic case that the snarky animations make more palatable.
"...that something very explody had happened" = instant like
Many people in Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona and New Mexico oppose government regulation. Perhaps they should all go camping near pipelines.
Oh, come on. Just our states? Try ALL of them. We had to repair a logged anomaly on a 20" pipeline two feet from the corner of a guy's basement. He could hear the pigs pass by! They knew the line was there and still built the neighborhood. Oh, yeah, that was Ohio.
"The net pressures dropped. Little did the controller know that an explosion had occurred..."
Underqualified to stare at screens? 🤣 You had ONE job!
There are a couple of different ways to 'Pig' a pipeline; One method is to use big rubber spheres that are very dense and hollow on the inside. There is a recessed pressure valve on the ball that has a "Schrader valve" (an industrial version of a tire inflation valve) and the ball is filled with liquid (absolutely no air, as air is compressible). We used car anti-freeze inside of the spheres and had a 'sizing ring' that was 102% of the inner diameter of the pipe. The ball was put in to a launcher trap (think of a torpedo tube with a door and after you seal it off you flood it with product (for our pipeline it was either gasoline or diesel fuel). On a signal a plunger would rise up inside and the sphere would get launched in to the flow of the pipe.
Along the way we had these little sensors that were called "Sphere-Here" that popped up a flag to indicate that a ball just went past. Depending upon how long the line was (50-200 km) it could take anywhere from six hours to two days to get to another trap (called a receiver trap) that was an enlarged section of pipe that the ball would drop in to and roll down to the door. (launcher traps were tilted so the ball would roll away from the door, receiver traps were tilted so the ball would roll to the door.
We did spheres a couple of times a year. These were non-instrumented and were mostly to get any sort of dirt, grit or welding slag inside of the line and to push it ahead and in to the receiving trap where there also was a big strainer basket (about two meters tall and a meter across, the strainer was the size of the drum on a commercial sized washing machine but built to handle 1400 PSI of pressure).
Usually we recovered a few buckets full of grit (like fine gravel or sand) and maybe a quarter pound of welding slag that finally scraped its way off the inside of the pipeline. One time I was there when we opened the trap and found a rubber glove and a steel cannister that once held welding rods.
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Every two years or so we had to launch an instrumented inspection tool. This was a long string of what looked like toilet plungers assembled on to metal carriers and put together in a chain about 10-15 feet long. In the middle was a bigger section that had rings of magnets, little metallic probes and pickup coils. That section was hollow inside and contained a computer and a great deal of memory. It was sealed against the pressure.
What it did was to generate its own magnetic field from the fist sized permanent magnets and the little sensor probes and coils about six inches behind the magnets would indicate what the wall thickness was (magnetic field would deviate from the wall being corroded/thin or even by some other metallic object outside of the pipe).
We had spots along the line that we would dig up that were precisely known and prior to launching the inspection tool they would put on this giant magnet (that was a steel bearing-cap off of some engine that was made in to a magnet. When the inspection tool passed that giant magnet it created a big blip on the recording and that acted like a roadsign to show where the tool was.
After the inspection tool was removed from the pipe the electronics were unsealed and the data was downloaded on to a laptop computer. It took the inspection company (we used Halliburton at the time) to look at the logs and they would give us a big report showing every anomaly in the pipeline. That created the work-list for the pipeline maintenance crews go go dig things up to replace any section that was approaching regulatory limits but also if the inspection detected a dent or the presence of some new piece of metal near our pipeline.
New metal near our pipe that we did not know about before meant that someone had dug and buried something near us. That required that we dig it up to re-inspect our pipe and in some cases to make the intruder take their pipe or object and move it somewhere else.
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One time we had a pipeline leak when they were redoing a highway that we ran along side of. The road crew was driving in guardrails along the shoulder and did not call the one-call number for a utility locate. They pounded a steel guardrail post right in to the top of our pipeline. It put in a tiny, 1/2" long crack with a dent on top of the pipe. Just enough to leak gasoline over the months. Eventually we took a report for the smell of gasoline in a nearby ditch and went out there and found the guardrail over our pipeline.
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I took a different job with a different company (back in the 1990's) but even at that point in time we had cathodic-protection (current to prevent external corrosion), line inspection and we had to do what is known as "hydrostatic testing" where the pipeline is filled with water and overpressured and it must hold that pressure for a day or so without losing even a few drops of water. Even with all of that we had pipeline breaks from people digging and hitting it with a backhoe or someone gouging off our protective coating.
Thank you for taking the time to share this. 🙏🏻 I found it very interesting.
“Something very explodey.” 😂😂
I remember hearing about this in the news at the time.
I remember when this happened. I saw the grisly photos of the burned vehicles in the Albuquerque Journal. Horrific.
We were actually on a family vacation to Carlsbad when this happened. We got stopped and told to turn around, having to stay in Roswell after driving all day.
“No Data Bro”
“It’s still f*cked”
😂😂A+
I lived in this town for a few years and somehow never heard about this incident. Weird!
Nightmare stuff here. Thanks John.