Enbridge pipeline explodes in Kentucky, killing 1 person and sending 5 to hospital

[TomSea]

Enbridge pipeline explodes in Kentucky, killing 1 person and sending 5 to hospital
'Enbridge is aware of and is responding to a rupture,' Calgary-based company says
The Associated Press · Posted: Aug 01, 2019 8:11 AM MT

A regional gas pipeline ruptured early Thursday in Kentucky, causing a massive explosion that killed one person, hospitalized five others, destroyed railroad tracks and forced the evacuation of a nearby mobile home park, authorities said.

Some structures were completely consumed by the blaze, and five to seven people were unaccounted for when firefighters extinguished the flames hours later, Lincoln County Emergency Management Director Don Gilliam said.

"The part of the area that has been compromised, there's just nothing left," Gilliam said when asked whether residents might return to their trailer homes. "The residences that are still standing or damaged will be accessible. There doesn't really look like there's any in-between back there. They're either destroyed or they're still standing."

Read more at: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/fatal-enbridge-gas-pipeline-explosion-kentucky-1.5232915

Amazing, I had not seen this in the US press yet though, I am sure, it has been reported.

[thackney]

https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/2019/08/01/kentucky-gas-explosion-911-audio-reveals-frantic-moments-after-blast/1888504001/

... few minutes later, a firefighter at the scene urgently requests for help: "I need this area completely shut down and evacuated."

In the minutes that follow, responding firefighters report seeing flames "shooting about 150 feet up in the area" as they work to evacuate homes in the area. Authorities later said about 75 people were evacuated from the nearby Indian Camp mobile home park.

At one point in the transmission, a dispatcher advises that a representative from Norfolk Southern railroad company called to say a train passed through the area at the time of the explosion and a conductor reported seeing "an airplane fall out of the sky and crash."

[thackney]

https://www.apnews.com/1ee215d58e7e49838249589d91022da6

...The 30-inch (76-centimeter) wide pipeline moves natural gas under such high pressure that the flames reached about 300 feet (91 meters) in the air and could be seen throughout the county, he said.

The explosion around 1 a.m. was so huge that it showed up on radar, according to a tweet from WKYT-TV meteorologist Chris Bailey. It took hours for firefighters to douse the flames, with trucks repeatedly refilling their tanks and returning to the scene....

...“It woke us up and it was just a big roar and it was fire going up into the sky as far as you could see,” she said. “Our windows were shaking really bad, and our doors and the ground, you could hear the ground just moving and tumbling and rolling. And then we got to feeling the heat from the fire, so we got in our vehicle and took off to get away from it.”

Emergency managers said the rupture involved the Texas Eastern Transmission pipeline, which is owned and operated by Enbridge. The pipeline stretches several thousand miles from the Mexican border in Texas to New York City. A statement from the company based in Calgary, Canada, said “Enbridge is aware of and is responding to a rupture on the Texas Eastern system in Lincoln County.”

The blast also damaged railroad tracks, forcing 31 trains to back up overnight, authorities said....

[IsailedawayfromFR]

https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/2019/08/01/kentucky-gas-explosion-911-audio-reveals-frantic-moments-after-blast/1888504001/

... few minutes later, a firefighter at the scene urgently requests for help: "I need this area completely shut down and evacuated."

In the minutes that follow, responding firefighters report seeing flames "shooting about 150 feet up in the area" as they work to evacuate homes in the area. Authorities later said about 75 people were evacuated from the nearby Indian Camp mobile home park.

At one point in the transmission, a dispatcher advises that a representative from Norfolk Southern railroad company called to say a train passed through the area at the time of the explosion and a conductor reported seeing "an airplane fall out of the sky and crash."

an airplane?

[thackney]

Interactive map
https://www.enbridge.com/map#map:infrastructure,gaspipelinetrans,gatheringInfrastructure

With 9,071 miles of pipeline, Texas Eastern Transmission (Texas Eastern) connects Texas and the Gulf Coast with high demand markets in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, and can transport 11.69 Bcf/d of natural gas, supplying fuel for electric generation facilities and helping to meet peak-day demands. Texas Eastern also connects to East Tennessee Natural Gas and Algonquin Gas Transmission.

[thackney]

an airplane?

I wonder if that could be the cause, or just a false report.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

I wonder if that could be the cause, or just a false report.

No telling, but the anti-fossil fuels crowd will certainly sensationalize this.

I find this other recent fire in Kentucky more interesting.  I wonder of whiskey can change the ph of the water enough to cause all the dead fish?
The Kentucky River is brimming with dead fish after a fire at a bourbon warehouse
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/07/us/jim-beam-warehouse-fire-kentucky-environmental-impact-trnd/index.html