three towns blowing up from gas explosions north of Boston.
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injury reports just starting, 35 firesSecondary disaster as lawyer rush to sign up clients
in Andover alone!
70 simultaneous fires? amazing response from from the fire fighters from 3 states. some still burning. some home just imploded with no fire. something seriously wrong here???
The early reports is that the gas supply lines were overpressurized. At one point they recomended that anyone with gas to their house or business should evacuate. Odds are the distribution lines are going to be leaking so they will be chasing leaks for days.
160,000 people told to evacuate! roads out clogged, highway acess clogged, highway in gridlock! sleep on the street?
There was a gas explosion in western pa on the 10th as well. Luckily no one was hurt. And only one home destroyed
now to find the person or persons and do they work for columbia gas company. the gov. charlie baker has declared a state of emergency so the state can take over the check and repair job and he pulls N star company to head the job because columbia is not responding fast enough. they are overwhelmed. the local news reported it could take weeks to do the job and no one is getting electric until it is deemed safe. what a mess. i truly feel bad for these people. all of the city of lawrence is involved and most people in that city don't have two nickels to rub together.
While waiting for the investigation, let me go into a bit of history on heating with natural gas. The original source of the gas in most of the northeast was not pipeline gas obtained from underground wells. The original source was coal gas plants where the gas was produced from coal in local coal gas plants. The plants themselves are long gone but their legacy remains as the waste from the process was usually dumped on the ground and is hazardous. The plants frequently were on waterfronts where the gas was delivered and many communities like Burlington VT and Portland Maine have superfund sites on their waterfronts.
Unlike natural gas which is mostly methane, the coal gas was a brew of gases including hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The gas quality varied and could be corrosive. The piping used to distribute the gas was steel in many cases and leaks were frequent. The one good thing about coal gas was that it normally was produced and distributed at low pressure. Modern pipeline gas is distributed at high pressure and then reduced in pressure to the street pressure. Gas pressure regulators are used and if they fail, they can lead to over pressurization of the street system. There are usually alarms and relief valves that should be in place to protect the low pressure street lines. When gas demand increases in an area the easiest way to increase volume is crank up the distribution pressure on the mainlines which increase the stress on the line regulators. If through lack of training or proper standard operating procedures the regulators are bypassed, even through a small pipe, the downstream low pressure lines can get over pressurized quickly.
During the Carter administration artificial price controls on natural gas production cut the natural gas supply way down. It was dropping so quickly that the government banned any new power generation with natural gas and banned gas companies from selling new fixtures to use gas for lighting. Many gas companies were bought and sold as they became legacy systems where they had to serve an ever shrinking customer base. In the intervening 40 years new methods of drilling for gas and oil means that natural gas is now plentiful except in New England where there are not enough gas lines. Many new customers want gas compared to oil and most new power plants are natural gas. Even though gas is available and everyone wants it, the profit for residential is small so many firms have underinvested in their 100 plus year old systems except where large customers are concerned. The older the neighborhood the higher the risk an the towns affected in Mass fit that bill.
In the Portland Maine area there was an ongoing issue with gas leaks in the streets and several high profile issues including a home explosion where the gas had been shut off for years but a leak in the street had followed the rusted out pipe into a basement. The utility wasn’t doing any voluntary upgrades so they were forced by the towns to replace nearly all the pipes in the streets several years ago. The leaks were substantially reduced. A big issue with gas lines in streets is that they are shallow usually 2’ deep. Water lines on the other hand are usually a minimum four feet in northern New England. Sanitary Sewer systems also can be far deeper. Therefore it is easy to disturb old gas lines when digging or backfilling a trench. I used to work for water utility long ago and we would get gas leaks in nearby gas lines just by using a vibratory compactor to compact the sand in the trench when backfilling. In many areas the ground is ledge and frequently the household gas line was run in the same trench as water line with the gas line on top. Frost can raise havoc with steel gas lines and when they break underground the leak follows the trench to a basement.
My speculation is this is not over, they may be able to get the system back on line but the underground distribution is most likely stressed and the gas company is going to be chasing leaks in the ground for years or until they are forced to replace all the lines with HDPE lines which are far more resistant to abuse and frost action. It will be interesting if Columbia Gas will be the company that will end up with the system, I expect they will end up in court and the damages awarded will be significant. At a minimum upper management will “retire” and I wouldn't be surprised if another larger company ends up owning the franchise.
Unlike natural gas which is mostly methane, the coal gas was a brew of gases including hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The gas quality varied and could be corrosive. The piping used to distribute the gas was steel in many cases and leaks were frequent. The one good thing about coal gas was that it normally was produced and distributed at low pressure. Modern pipeline gas is distributed at high pressure and then reduced in pressure to the street pressure. Gas pressure regulators are used and if they fail, they can lead to over pressurization of the street system. There are usually alarms and relief valves that should be in place to protect the low pressure street lines. When gas demand increases in an area the easiest way to increase volume is crank up the distribution pressure on the mainlines which increase the stress on the line regulators. If through lack of training or proper standard operating procedures the regulators are bypassed, even through a small pipe, the downstream low pressure lines can get over pressurized quickly.
During the Carter administration artificial price controls on natural gas production cut the natural gas supply way down. It was dropping so quickly that the government banned any new power generation with natural gas and banned gas companies from selling new fixtures to use gas for lighting. Many gas companies were bought and sold as they became legacy systems where they had to serve an ever shrinking customer base. In the intervening 40 years new methods of drilling for gas and oil means that natural gas is now plentiful except in New England where there are not enough gas lines. Many new customers want gas compared to oil and most new power plants are natural gas. Even though gas is available and everyone wants it, the profit for residential is small so many firms have underinvested in their 100 plus year old systems except where large customers are concerned. The older the neighborhood the higher the risk an the towns affected in Mass fit that bill.
In the Portland Maine area there was an ongoing issue with gas leaks in the streets and several high profile issues including a home explosion where the gas had been shut off for years but a leak in the street had followed the rusted out pipe into a basement. The utility wasn’t doing any voluntary upgrades so they were forced by the towns to replace nearly all the pipes in the streets several years ago. The leaks were substantially reduced. A big issue with gas lines in streets is that they are shallow usually 2’ deep. Water lines on the other hand are usually a minimum four feet in northern New England. Sanitary Sewer systems also can be far deeper. Therefore it is easy to disturb old gas lines when digging or backfilling a trench. I used to work for water utility long ago and we would get gas leaks in nearby gas lines just by using a vibratory compactor to compact the sand in the trench when backfilling. In many areas the ground is ledge and frequently the household gas line was run in the same trench as water line with the gas line on top. Frost can raise havoc with steel gas lines and when they break underground the leak follows the trench to a basement.
My speculation is this is not over, they may be able to get the system back on line but the underground distribution is most likely stressed and the gas company is going to be chasing leaks in the ground for years or until they are forced to replace all the lines with HDPE lines which are far more resistant to abuse and frost action. It will be interesting if Columbia Gas will be the company that will end up with the system, I expect they will end up in court and the damages awarded will be significant. At a minimum upper management will “retire” and I wouldn't be surprised if another larger company ends up owning the franchise.
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Our house in Seattle still had the gas lighting piping in it. The remains of Seattle's old coal gas plant are now a park on Lake Union.
http://www.seattle.gov/parks/find/parks/gas-works-park
![gas-works-park-5[6].jpg](https://www.hearth.com/talk/data/attachments/229/229630-c9ae0d5818a01efef934d265d2de27e9.jpg "gas-works-park-5[6].jpg")
http://www.seattle.gov/parks/find/parks/gas-works-park
on the same day that this thread was started, the same gas company dug in front of my business. we were never notified.during the work day, we could not ship or receive as the work was preformed in front of our access to the loading dock. just a small inconvenience, but gives the feeling they don't care. Mass gov. C. Baker ordered Columbia replaced by Eversource, peakbagger is a clairvoyant !
I actual think the hand over to Eversource was already in progress. Once its state of emergency the governor can do what he wants and let the lawyers settle it out afterwards.
I caught a short news clip this morning that during a system upgrade a pressure indicator/transmitter was disabled/removed by the gas company. This reportedly allowed the pressure in the low pressure distribution lines to be "150" times the normal pressure in the line. Not knowing the normal system pressure I could speculate using a typical 10 to 40 psi street pressure, that's 1500 to 6000 psi in the line. Definitely not good and if true I expect a lot of folks are going to be needing alternatives to gas as I expect the under street distribution piping is going to need near total inspection/replacement and I don't see that happening before cold weather. If I had to guess there must have been a pressure reducing station off a main high pressure distribution line that supplied the lower pressure street gas and they turned off/disabled the downstream sensing line?. If its a normal pressure reducing valve, the valve would see no pressure on the down stream side and open full open to try to get the downstream gas pressure up to setpoint. I have seen that happen in industrial situations where the sensing line gets plugged. Annoying at low pressures but dangerous at these reported pressures. Easy to do at the end of long day to forget to open up a isolation valve.
Looking at table I could quickly find https://ipspipe.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Pipe_pressure_rating.pdf, these reported pressures are below the theoretic bursting pressure of sch 40 iron and the fittings may be 3000 psi class (not sure what code is for natural gas offhand) so if it was on the low end, the pipe and fittings could take the pressure but expect a lot of old deteriorated understreet components may not.
At least Columbia gas has offered to pay for expenses to owners displaced. I expect that total is going to skyrocket and expect with such a blank checkbook that fraud will soon follow.
Looking at table I could quickly find https://ipspipe.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Pipe_pressure_rating.pdf, these reported pressures are below the theoretic bursting pressure of sch 40 iron and the fittings may be 3000 psi class (not sure what code is for natural gas offhand) so if it was on the low end, the pipe and fittings could take the pressure but expect a lot of old deteriorated understreet components may not.
At least Columbia gas has offered to pay for expenses to owners displaced. I expect that total is going to skyrocket and expect with such a blank checkbook that fraud will soon follow.
Not quite as dramatic, today's report says:
"The federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has reported that the pressure in the Columbia Gas system should have been around 0.5 pounds per square inch (PSI), but readings in the area reached at least 6 PSI — twelve times higher than the system was intended to hold,"
Hopefully that means less infrastructure damage.
"The federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has reported that the pressure in the Columbia Gas system should have been around 0.5 pounds per square inch (PSI), but readings in the area reached at least 6 PSI — twelve times higher than the system was intended to hold,"
Hopefully that means less infrastructure damage.
Yup that is a big difference. I have several projects in the region with 40 psi street gas. 0.5 psi is quite low.
talking to a real good friend a plumber he says .5 psi is normal for residential so i think even if the pipe hit 100 psi it should hold it's the regulators in the circuit that are probably no good. around here there are still many old boilers running that run on the millivolt valves. those valves run on 3/4 a volt made by the pilot. the gas at high pressure would probably force it's way out the pilot and main valve fill the chimney with raw gas and poof it just need a spark. they run just like a gas water heater. only one advantage to that old system. when the lights go out you are still have heat and hot water.
BTW, on news reports it looks like they are substantially replacing all the lines in the streets with what looks to be HPDE. Definitely the right way to go, do it once and be done with it. The PITA is lots of folks without heat for a couple of months.
The claim is they are putting in flow and pressure control sensors on the system so it can not happen again.
I hope no one gets CO poisoning trying to do supplementary heating.
The claim is they are putting in flow and pressure control sensors on the system so it can not happen again.
I hope no one gets CO poisoning trying to do supplementary heating.
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