No smoking today in Pa. !
And 4,000 feet high !
Local weather reporters thought it was a rain storm. It was a storm . . of flammable, planet-cooking methane gas. That kind of storm. Which could be repeated anywhere at any time along the thousands of miles of these pipe bombs waiting to happen.
Gas plume on weather radar
Pa. Gas Explosion Causes Huge Fireball
GREENSBURG, Pa. – A natural gas pipeline exploded in a towering, roaring fireball Friday, destroying a home several hundred yards away, damaging at least three others and creating waves of intense heat that burned a fleeing homeowner as he ran down a road, authorities said.
“It looked like you were looking down into hell,” said Forbes Road Volunteer Fire Chief Bob Rosatti.
The fire and heat seared scores of acres of woodlands around the pipeline in Salem Township, about 30 miles east of Pittsburgh, turning tall trees into blackened poles, melting the siding off one property, and causing wet pavement to steam. People miles away reported hearing a huge whooshing sound and feeling the ground rumble.
Before and after living near a gas pipe bomb
The pipeline company immediately invoked force majeure, claiming: “God did it ! Honest.” In legal circles, this is known as the Farce Majeure gambit. Fracking Sharia 101: Blame everything bad you do on God. Like global warming. . . and blowing people up.
From The Bill (Huston): Spectra and most outlets are reporting the line that failed was a 30″ called the “Delmont Line 27”. But according to aerial photos, I estimate the blast radius is 1,500 ft, which is more consistent with a 36″ line. This blast has characteristics quite similar to the Cleburne TX explosion of the 36″ Enterprise Products gas pipeline, the largest blast radius I’ve ever seen.
The man who was burned lived in the house closest to the fire. It was destroyed.
“He told us that he heard a loud noise and compared it to a tornado. All he saw was fire and started running up the roadway and a passerby picked him up,” Rosatti said.
“The heat was so intense that it was burning him as he was running,” he said.
He was conscious and talking to rescue workers when he was taken to the hospital, officials said.
Pipe bomb explosion ground zero
The pipeline is one of four parallel lines owned by Texas Eastern that run through the rural tract that Pete Rugh, 84, has called home his entire life.
“It scared the heck out of me. I heard this terrible roar. It shook to beat the devil,” Rugh said.
“The noise was so great I couldn’t hear anybody on the phone,” he said. “The room where I was sitting turned orange. I thought the fire was closer to me than it was, so I grabbed my keys, got in my vehicle and got out of there.”
The company did not immediately provide any other details, pending review by their legal defense team.
Lorrie Sherman-Miller, who lives 5 miles from the site, and said she’s used to hearing a “rumble” from the rushing sound of gas when crews perform maintenance.
“But the sound this morning was magnified 1,000 times,” Sherman-Miller said.
Sherman-Miller drove toward the site because she knows some people who live in the area and parked at a gas station about a quarter mile from the fire to see it.
“As I drove to the site, the closer I got, the hotter it became. The sky and the flames were terrifying,” she said. “When I pulled in to the BP it was so hot that I couldn’t leave my window down. Steam was coming off the parking lot and the roads,” which were damp from earlier rains.
If you were within a quarter of a mile of this line, you’d either get killed, charbroiled or gassed with abundant clean-burning natural gas. If you live within a quarter mile of a gas transmission line, be sure to keep a supply of marshmallows, graham crackers and chocolate on hand – along with your Nomex jumpsuit, Class III fire extinguisher and, of course, the trusty AR 15 for the looters.
If you live down-pipeline, now might be a good time to consider switching to solar or wind power – which you can opt for on your utility bill. Or you can just wait for the big one.
Fracked gas causes more accidents and environmental destruction in a week that the US nuclear power industry has in its history. More hazardous radioactive waste in a month than nuclear power does in a year. Much more dangerous than mining coal.
That kind of clean burning natural gas. The newest way to cook a planet.
Spectra Gas Pipeline Explosion Plume on the weather report
Aerial pictures of monumental damage
Massive damage in Pennsylvania
40 Mile Long Gas Cloud From Pipeline Explosion
Clean burning natural gas
A natural gas explosion at a pipeline complex near Greensburg, Pennsylvania, on April 29, 2016.
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Blast occured on 36-inch Texas Eastern line, state says
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Company invokes force majeure, unsure of timing for repairs
An explosion and fire on a major Spectra Energy Corp. pipeline that crosses half the U.S. is disrupting natural gas shipments from western Pennsylvania to the Northeast and wrecking havoc in the area.
Crews have finally shut off the gas feeding the flames, which burst out of Spectra’s 36-inch Texas Eastern pipeline in Salem Township at about 8:30 a.m., John Poister, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, said in an e-mail.
While repairs will start as soon as possible, it’s unclear when service will be restored, Spectra said in a notice. The company’s lawyers invoked force majeure at midday in an attempt to avoid liability, sending natural gas futures surging as much as 5.6 percent on the New York Mercantile Exchange on speculation that the outage will limit supplies to the Northeast.
Force majeure, or “an act of God”is invoked to attempt to remove a company from contractual obligation that they don’t want to have to pay for. Which God has got nothing to do with, but liability lawsuits do.
One of the country’s largest pipelines, Texas Eastern runs from the Gulf Coast up through the booming Marcellus and Utica shale regions all the way to New Jersey, where it hooks up with other lines into New York and New England. The Penn-Jersey section had been transporting 1.3 billion cubic feet of gas a day through the Delmont compressor in Westmoreland County, according to Het Shah, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
That’s a lot of pizzas !
Gas may still be able to move out of the region through an underutilized system known as the Capacity Restoration Project, which runs parallel to the Penn-Jersey system, according to BNEF analyst Joanna Wu.
“That whole area is a big web of pipelines, so it will find its way to market, but in the short-term, it’s going to cut some flows,” Shah said.
“Unless the other line blows up too. Then we’re pretty much fracked. And New Yorkers can learn the joys of cooking with Sterno.”
Spectra gas pipe bomb explosion ground zero. Those funny looking sticks were once trees.
The explosion created a massive conflagration that damaged several homes near the pipeline, engulfing one of them and injuring a man inside who was transported to a Pittsburgh hospital, Poister said. Residents of the area told media outlets they could feel rumbling as far as 6 miles away. Passing motorists captured images of the fiery scene and emergency crews set up a quarter-mile evacuation zone around the blast area.
We didn’t fracking do fracking nothing
“Our first concern is for the safety of the community, our employees and any others who may be affected,” Phil West, a spokesman for Spectra, wrote in an e-mail. “We have activated our emergency response plan and are cooperating with authorities in our response, and we will provide more information at a later time as soon as our lawyers allow it.” A company spokesman said that pizza coupons have been ordered for everyone in the town.
The DEP is investigating any effect on nearby gas wells and any environmental damage, Poister said.
“So far, it looks like one big fracking mess.”
Clean burning planet-cooking highly explosive methane gas
GREENSBURG, Pa. – A natural gas pipeline exploded in a towering, roaring fireball Friday, destroying a home several hundred yards away, damaging at least three others and creating waves of intense heat that burned a fleeing homeowner as he ran down a road, authorities said.
“It looked like you were looking down into hell,” said Forbes Road Volunteer Fire Chief Bob Rosatti.
The fire and heat seared scores of acres of woodlands around the pipeline in Salem Township, about 30 miles east of Pittsburgh, turning tall trees into blackened poles, melting the siding off one property, and causing wet pavement to steam. People miles away reported hearing a huge whooshing sound and feeling the ground rumble.
A quarter-mile evacuation zone was established, affecting about a dozen homes, said state Department of Environmental Protection spokesman John Poister.
The pipeline was shut off and the fire brought under control within an hour, but residual gas burned for several hours before the fire was completely out by early afternoon, officials said.
The man who was burned lived in the house closest to the fire. It was destroyed.
“He told us that he heard a loud noise and compared it to a tornado. All he saw was fire and started running up the roadway and a passerby picked him up,” Rosatti said.
“The heat was so intense that it was burning him as he was running,” he said.
He was conscious and talking to rescue workers when he was taken to the hospital, officials said.
The pipeline is owned by Texas Eastern Transmission, a unit of Houston-based Spectra Energy Corp. What caused the fire to erupt was under investigation.
Spectra Energy said the 30-inch diameter section of pipeline where the fire occurred had been built in 1981 and that “no areas of concern” were found during an inline inspection in 2012.
One mighty big gashole
“Our first concern is for the safety of the community and our employees, and we are cooperating and coordinating with state and local authorities in our response,” the company said in a statement.
The pipeline is one of four parallel lines owned by Texas Eastern that run through the rural tract that Pete Rugh, 84, has called home his entire life.
“It scared the heck out of me. I heard this terrible roar. It shook to beat the devil,” Rugh said.
“The noise was so great I couldn’t hear anybody on the phone,” he said. “The room where I was sitting turned orange. I thought the fire was closer to me than it was, so I grabbed my keys, got in my vehicle and got out of there.”
The company did not immediately provide any other details.
Lorrie Sherman-Miller, who lives 5 miles from the site, and said she’s used to hearing a “rumble” from the rushing sound of gas when crews perform maintenance.
“But the sound this morning was magnified 1,000 times,” Sherman-Miller said.
Sherman-Miller drove toward the site because she knows some people who live in the area and parked at a gas station about a quarter mile from the fire to see it.
“As I drove to the site, the closer I got, the hotter it became. The sky and the flames were terrifying,” she said. “When I pulled in to the BP it was so hot that I couldn’t leave my window down. Steam was coming off the parking lot and the roads,” which were damp from earlier rains.
A hazardous materials division of the U.S. Department of Transportation will take over the investigation because the pipeline crosses several states, Poister said.
The state DEP will continue to investigate any impact on gas wells in the area and any environmental impact.
Rugh said Texas Eastern installed the first natural gas pipeline on his property in 1958.
“I’ve always feared this, but I’ve never had any problems before,” Rugh said.
Cleburne gas pipe bomb explosion
Spectra and most outlets are reporting the line that failed was a 30″in called the “Delmont Line 27”. But according to aerial photos, I estimate the blast radius is 1,500’ft, which is more consistent with a 36″in line. This blast has characteristics quite similar to the Cleburne TX explosion of the 36″in Enterprise Products gas pipeline, the largest blast radius I’ve ever seen.
Either way, had this been in an urban setting, Toonerville would no longer exist
We need to get FERC and the PA PUC to recommend that the siting of transmission and major gathering pipelines in the vicinity of schools be outlawed. We have the Marc 1 pipeline near the Wyalusing school complex as well as pipelines near the Dallas PA school complex. These pipelines need to be rerouted and the existing pipelines abandoned. There is no excuse for having put so many children in harm’s way knowingly. File your complaint about these high consequence areas in PA with the PUC and FERC as well as any others you may be aware of.
The number of people in the US that live within a quarter mile of a major gas transmission line is about the same as the population of the UK. And anyone of them could be blown to bits when one of these pipe bombs goes kaboom.
Hence the lawyers’ “farce majeure” claim on this explosion as soon as it happened. No apologies, just a team of corporate defense lawyers mumbling “farce majeure” to the press. If the pipelines are held culpable in court, their insurance on these lines goes through the roof – because they are insuring a massive linear pipe bomb.
The Kochs were held liable when their ill-maintained Texas pipeline incinerated a couple of kids.
Contrary to popular belief, ferrous metal is not immortal. Nor are welds. Nor valves.
A high pressure gas transmission line is simply a pipe bomb waiting to happen.
Only a matter of when and how big.
The same thing is highly possible in neighboring Butler Co. They are burying pipeline with uninspected welds. I was there, I saw it, I reported it, I was terminated. Evans, PA and the surrounding area are in danger. Yeah, I said it right.
Kind of hard to inspect a weld under twelve feet of dirt, huh ?
When a pipe bomb bursts, the company makes the evidence go bye-bye then calls the defense lawyers.
Could they have put pressure differential valves in to provide for automatic shut down on all of these systems ?
Sure they could put more check-valves on the transmission lines – but at what spacing ?
Say every 5 miles. At the PSI in these lines X 36″ diameter x 5 miles = a massive pipe bomb.
And the valves would leak. . . so even more of a chance of a bomb event.