MA - As many as 17 house explosions in different locations, Lawrence/Andover, 13 Sept 2018

[SuziQ]

Wow. the Gov seems a bit put out and defensive.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

 

[SuziQ]

Oh and they will get back to us sometime tomorrow

 

[SuziQ]

Lawrence 10 patients

 

[Inthedetails]

Wow. the Gov seems a bit put out and defensive.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Interesting. I just looked him up....he's running for re-election this year.

You'd think he would be doing whatever he could to look amazing.

jmo

 

[CARIIS]

NECN had a natural gas expert on and he wasn't even helpful except saying this type of issue is "rare." Yeah no kidding, thank you for your contribution.

Attn All Personal :

We are in lawsuit protection mode.

1 Shut up

2 Lie

Thank you

YOur boss

 

[Betty P]

I missed the last half of the PC but caught up with the news reporter's analysis. Reporter said they said the Gas Company (Columbia?) is still working to de-pressurize the lines. Haven't been able to complete that yet and it will take a while.

So the whole situation still sounds dangerous. They have to depressurize those lines. Sounds like it was a high pressure mistake that caused the explosions.

 

[whitelilac]

I still can't understand that this could happen. If this was due to some pressure issue, you'd think that there would be an alert system, or some kind of built in safety protocol if pressure was suddenly too high....like valves or a shut down system. You can't assume everything should be ok. What if there is some other event that could cause a pressure rise, something not caused by human error?
Then what do I know about gas distribution?

 

[Inthedetails]

I missed the last half of the PC but caught up with the news reporter's analysis. Reporter said they said the Gas Company (Columbia?) is still working to de-pressurize the lines. Haven't been able to complete that yet and it will take a while.

So the whole situation still sounds dangerous. They have to depressurize those lines. Sounds like it was a high pressure mistake that caused the explosions.

If it's taking awhile to depressure the lines, can we assume it took awhile to build up the pressure? Or does it build up really quickly? (I don't know.)

If it builds slowly, then it seems like someone wasn't paying attention. But, I would also expect built-in triggers and warning and shut offs when it gets to a dangerous level. What the heck happened?

I wonder if 911 and/or the utility company received "gas smell" calls today before the explosions started happening. I'm very curious.

I once called our gas company because of a gas smell and a crew showed up FAST, almost instantly, to check it out.

jmo

 

[CARIIS]

I still can't understand that this could happen. If this was due to some pressure issue, you'd think that there would be an alert system, or some kind of built in safety protocol if pressure was suddenly too high....like valves or a shut down system. You can't assume everything should be ok. What if there is some other event that could cause a pressure rise, something not caused by human error?
Then what do I know about gas distribution?

I was surprised that they came out (right away) with there was a pressure problem so I think it was more like Deep Water Horizon where there was some frantic period of time where the guys working on the pipes knew something was not ok and just could not correct in time before everything went south

jmo

 

[CARIIS]

This might have been posted already. Daily Mail coverage - they always are fast when it comes to photos:

Major gas line problem causes 50 EXPLOSIONS in homes outside of Boston | Daily Mail Online

I dont know why they have such a bad rep

there stuff has not been wrong generally speaking \

moo

 

[Sleuth15]

Over pressure in the main lines may have caused the pressure reducing valves at a furnace or water heater to fail, causing gas to blow through uncontrolled and ignite either from a standing pilot light or other ignition source in house

 

[SuziQ]

Interesting. I just looked him up....he's running for re-election this year.

You'd think he would be doing whatever he could to look amazing.

jmo

At the end he really snapped a reporter's head off.

 

[Betty P]

If it's taking awhile to depressure the lines, can we assume it took awhile to build up the pressure? Or does it build up really quickly? (I don't know.)

If it builds slowly, then it seems like someone wasn't paying attention. But, I would also expect built-in triggers and warning and shut offs when it gets to a dangerous level. What the heck happened?

I wonder if 911 and/or the utility company received "gas smell" calls today before the explosions started happening. I'm very curious.

I once called our gas company because of a gas smell and a crew showed up FAST, almost instantly, to check it out.

jmo

I get the impression it all happened very quickly. For whatever reason (they didn't say) it's taking them a longer time to de-pressure. If they had been working on some upgrades to the system before this, it could be they used some private contractors instead of their own people. JMO, in that situation, they may not have been able to oversee the work as closely, but had to rely on the contractor(s). JMO, I don't know for sure, it's just a theory.

The problem encountered could also be in both the physical pipeline, hardware, etc. system and also in the computer part of the system. On the IT side, if there's a problem, it could take a while to go through all the code, etc. to find the mistakes. One would assume, though, that they beta tested all of this very well ahead of time.

ETA: I'm not expert, I'm just "spitballing".

 

[Inthedetails]

Over pressure in the main lines may have caused the pressure reducing valves at a furnace or water heater to fail, causing gas to blow through uncontrolled and ignite either from a standing pilot light or other ignition source in house

Any info on how long the lines were overpressured? That's my question. I have it in my head it happened today with the upgrade work, but I don't know if that is a reasonable assumption.

I'm curious how many safety steps were missed before there was an explosion. Surely there had to be more than one step missed....or does one mistake cause multiple houses to blow up?

Or...is this just a freak accident? IDK.

jmo

 

[Inthedetails]

I get the impression it all happened very quickly. For whatever reason (they didn't say) it's taking them a longer time to de-pressure. If they had been working on some upgrades to the system before this, it could be they used some private contractors instead of their own people. JMO, in that situation, they may not have been able to oversee the work as closely, but had to rely on the contractor(s). JMO, I don't know for sure, it's just a theory.

The problem encountered could also be in both the physical pipeline, hardware, etc. system and also in the computer part of the system. On the IT side, if there's a problem, it could take a while to go through all the code, etc. to find the mistakes. One would assume, though, that they beta tested all of this very well ahead of time.

ETA: I'm not expert, I'm just "spitballing".

Thanks. You posted the reply while I asked more questions.

Good question about wondering if there was an outside contractor.

jmo

 

[Betty P]

Over pressure in the main lines may have caused the pressure reducing valves at a furnace or water heater to fail, causing gas to blow through uncontrolled and ignite either from a standing pilot light or other ignition source in house

Could the over pressure in the main lines also have caused some damage to the pipeline valves, etc.? Like if one (or more) of their pipeline valves broke, would they have to go in now and repair it?

 

[Betty P]

Thanks. You posted the reply while I asked more questions.

Good question about wondering if there was an outside contractor.

jmo

Everyone uses contractors in public utilities these days. I'm not a fan. We had a sewer line rupture up the street a couple years ago. Took forever to get someone out to fix it with sewage running down the road. While we waited, a young guy came out in a beat up pickup truck to mark the location of the electric, cable, gas,water, etc. lines around the area so they could dig. I noticed he had Texas license plates on his truck and asked him about it. He said, yeah, he was a low wage guy who worked for a contractor in Texas. He lived temporarily up here in northern Ohio doing this work. WTH? No offense, the guy was just trying to make a living, not very well.

 

[CARIIS]

I get the impression it all happened very quickly. For whatever reason (they didn't say) it's taking them a longer time to de-pressure. If they had been working on some upgrades to the system before this, it could be they used some private contractors instead of their own people. JMO, in that situation, they may not have been able to oversee the work as closely, but had to rely on the contractor(s). JMO, I don't know for sure, it's just a theory.

The problem encountered could also be in both the physical pipeline, hardware, etc. system and also in the computer part of the system. On the IT side, if there's a problem, it could take a while to go through all the code, etc. to find the mistakes. One would assume, though, that they beta tested all of this very well ahead of time.

ETA: I'm not expert, I'm just "spitballing".

You spit wall well!

 

[CARIIS]

Boy

our choices today are too much water or not enough

 

[flute4peace]

How crazy is this!!!!