Looks like a gas line over pressure problem. Someone is going to loose there job. 150,000 people being told to get out.
Looks like a gas line over pressure problem. Someone is going to loose there job. 150,000 people being told to get out.
6 hurt 2 critical. No fatality’s reported yet.
If you are one of them being told to boogie, don't berk around on Grassroots, GTFO.
Wow, initially I read it was 20-30 homes. Unreal!
Where?
Jerry From LA said:Where?
Lawrence and methen and Andover North Andover are involved.
Glad you are ok, how far from you is this happening? Stay safe up there!
I am fine. About 15-20 miles north east of me. This is going to be a big deal. So many people are going to be impacted.
Not to be all "tinfoil hat", but I wonder if it would be possible to do this from "the outside" with a computer hack?
I think it is more likely some one lost the instructions for the proper valve operation in a 100 year old valve box and the old timer that knew how retired.
An old friend in Reading sent me the news. He's shut off his gas main, as others in his neighborhood are being instructed to do.
From what I gathered they are working on depressurization but it is going to take a while. This tells me it was a big regional line that probibly was accidental connected to a main branch. This would explain why it is such a large area. We are talking a multiple square miles of area that is impacted. They have cut power to the city’s of Laurence and surrounding affected areas. There is real concern that there could be more issues.
dean1484 said:I think it is more likely some one lost the instructions for the proper valve operation in a 100 year old valve box and the old timer that knew how retired.
That happens more often than people realize although obviously with less catastrophic results.
Dam. There has been a fatality.
We had a similar thing like this happen one town over years back. Something like 15 homes destroys if I remember. You would think that this kind of thing just could not happen.
Something similar happened near San Francisco a few years ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bruno_pipeline_explosion
I've been following this since the news broke. I live on the other end of the state on the South Shore, but I have friends up near there, and a GRM'er and Challenge vet (David Seavey) that works in Lawrence (he's ok!). Around 50 confirmed "incidents" caused by this, with more to come. It looks like a war zone. It's unbelievable.
The one fatality so far was an 18 year old kid sitting in his car in his driveway, and the house exploded and tossed the chimney onto the car. 
Just when you feel safe in your home, something like this comes along......sucky times for a lot of people.
This had to be the result of an overpressure situation. The line pressure must have overpowered all of the residential shutoff valves.
One of the awful facts is that you need to let the gas burn off until you can shut the supply off. If you extinguish the fires, you run the risk of the gas accumulating in an area that could be subject to further explosions.
Wow ... hope they can get everything under control soon. Heart goes out to the people who have lost their home... oh and also the firefighters and first responders.
There has been no explanation of what happened. I can see this getting ugly if they don’t get ahead of the PR side of things. This part of the state is almost all hardworking blue collar people that were hit hard with the slow down of the early 2000s. They have been slowly coming back but it is not been easy. These people will get angered and start taking names. On both the corporate side as well as the political side.
So if you over pressure the system I assume they will have to replace every meter and regulator as well as every gas appliance that was exposed to the over pressure condition?
Columbia Gas earlier Thursday put out a news release saying it was upgrading natural gas lines in neighborhoods across the state, with a focus on enhanced safety features. Andover, North Andover and Lawrence projects were included.
Interesting safety enhancement features that they came up with
NPR was just talking about this on the way in said 80 homes, one fatality, and dozens injured. That had to frighten a few people.
I was a bit struck that the mayor was saying his first focus was on getting people home, not find the root cause. Basically that means you have to turn off the gas for an indefinite period of time to figure out what happened. I don't think I'd be willing to trust that.
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