Ian F
MegaDork
9/14/18 8:40 a.m.
In reply to The0retical :
How is that much different than the trust we have in systems currently in place? And here in the Northeast, many of these systems are over 100 years old and haven't really been maintained.
It's great how everyone is quick to dole out blame when things like this happen, but nobody wants to make the investment in replacing these aging systems that are ticking time bombs (in this case: literally).
"Why weren't we prepared for this???"
"Well... because being prepared costs money."
"I'm not paying for that..."
In reply to Ian F :
It was more a semantics nitpick than anything, likely due to the mood I was in this morning. The way he said it sounded more like:
"I'm more interested in getting you back into your homes and not having to use city emergency funds than dealing with the actual problem. Sorry that it's going to be inconvenient for you and good thing it isn't cold right now" rather than a reassurance the infrastructure company was dealing with the issue.
Infrastructure is a sore point for me, especially in the northeast. That's not a discussion for this board though.
kazoospec said:
Not to be all "tinfoil hat", but I wonder if it would be possible to do this from "the outside" with a computer hack?
It's a possibility. SCADA systems that run industrial stuff are some of the most notoriously poorly secured computer systems in existence. The right thing to do is to make sure they're only accessible by way of a secured communications system, but this is rarely done.
Edit: Fun fact, many are protected by nothing but the obscurity of the phone number for the modem they're attached to. Remember the wardialing scene from Wargames? That's how you'd find them.
pheller
UltimaDork
9/14/18 11:38 a.m.
Woody said:
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.
I work in the gas industry. You are on the right track.
The question is, where were the fail safes? Most distribution regulators have an operating reg, a backup reg, and a vent. Usually the backup reg and the vent work in conjunction to vent overpressure in the event the operating reg fails. This is of course hinges on the regulators being specced correctly, or knowing that your not accidently feeding 30lbs into a 1/2 pound system.
One explanation could be as others said, they tried to uprate (raise the pressure of the system) in one area, not knowing it was connected to a low pressure area. (Lack of Adequate and Correct Information - My Work)
I think it was a case of an uprated reg station that they didn't realize was connected to a low pressure system when it was uncorked. (Improper Installation of Equipment)
My gas engineer thinks it was sabotage, but for such a large area, that's highly unlikely. (Disgruntled Employee)
My company is lucky, nearly all of our system is medium pressure, which require service regulators, which help prevent situations like this. That being said, the industry has been slow to add overpressure sensors to reg stations, and even a service regulator can only hold so much overpressure.
In reply to The0retical :
In reply to The0retical :
In my experience when people are displaced from their homes the biggest concern is how soon they can go home. The mayor’s statement reflects that they are working to do that and it’s implied that it won’t happen until it’s determined to be safe. Finding the root cause and correcting it should already be well underway by then.
If it’s anything like NY they already more or less had a plan to deal with this as old systems fail pretty regularly. A lot of my week is working our aging equipment around or in place of other aging city systems.
java230
UltraDork
9/14/18 11:56 a.m.
Yikes, thats a big ass issue. I'm in the camp that thinks they accidentally dumped high pressure into the low pressure side.
Word in the local plumbing community is that a contractor for the gas company installed a new three way valve and had the high pressure pointing wrong way. Don't know if its true or not, but thats what I'm hearing. I do find it a little strange that the FBI is involved.
In reply to tr8todd :
I’d be more surprised if the FBI and others weren’t there. It’s better to investigate and find nothing than to have to catch up afterwards.
Wally - FBI arrived about 6:30 last night. NTSB got involved around 8-9:00.
The comment from our governor about the gas company response was telling when asked by reporters. He took a VERY long, uncomfortably long pause and said "Adequate".
So, this morning they were say 70 houses were damaged/destroyed. Might be more but that was the last I heard. There were fire crews that came from all over. I heard Lincoln NH sent crews (2.5-3 hours north of the area).
In Andover, there were 35 house affected. At one time, there were 18 simultaneous active fires being fought in town.
Seems like most of the affected areas were nearby the Rt. 495 corridor. Lawrence, MA evacuated everyone south of the Merrimack River. Told everyone to get north of the river as there were no issues there. In Andover they gave the all clear to everyone south of Salem Street (for those looking for some landmarks).
One Lawrence PD officer's house was on TV for an hour with smoke/flames coming out of it before fire crews could get to it. He actually was sent to his house officially. After seeing the state of things and checked that everything else was being handled, he left for his next call.
I heard there were 23 people hospitalized on top of the one person who passed.
News showed a chain of police cruisers heading from Boston to the area to help secure it last night. 50 cruisers. Possibility to send more today.
Very sad day, but so lucky it wasn't worse. House can be replaced...
I've live in Chelmsford, about 15-20 minutes west of the area.
One last thing... Supposedly the gas workers are on-strike or on lock-out. Work was being done by a sub-contractor....
I had to have a natural gas boiler turned up to 20 psi to operate properly. The local utility sent 2 guys to look over the situation, redundant failsafes
In reply to Wxdude10 - Mike :
The gas workers on lockout in MA are National Grid workers; Columbia Gas is the local gas company up there and unaffected by this.
That said, there's always implied shadiness with anything that has to do with Lawrence and the municipality, so I wouldn't doubt that some sloppy contractor hired on the cheap made a mistake causing this whole scenario to go down.
In the power industry I've had to interface with the gas guys on occasion and I always have the shake my head and wonder after I do.
The east coast has a buried infrastructure nightmare waiting to happen right now. Over the years the standardized color coding and labeling of both buried gas and buried power distribution lines has changed a dozen times, and they have both used variously the same colors and labels for both over the years. I have seen mock ups with half a dozen different gas lines and and their identical electrical counterparts that were all from the same city. It surprises me every time someone works on a buried line and doesn't get hurt.
As a homeowner if I was hooked to a gas line I would be asking some questions about the regulator on the side of my house right now and maybe looking at options I could put on my side of it to protect my home.
In reply to oldopelguy :
My town here in southeastern MA owns it's own gas and electric company. To be honest, they are great! They came out about 2 months back and changed our meter and inspected our hookup to the town lines for free. They even came inside and inspected our appliances to make sure everything was good before they left.
Any time something happens, these guys are on top of it immediately. With the recent incident north of Boston, they did a self inspection of all the mains into the town and found no issues. They have been very informative since the incident, mainly because it sent every resident of New England with natural gas understandably started freaking out (myself included) after this happened.
Also, it's probably like this everywhere, but here in MA, if you are digging around in your yard for a project or a crew needs to dig up the street, they have to call in the local gas company by law to avoid accidentally blowing up the neighborhood. 1-800-DIG-SAFE!
Also, the MA State Police found ANOTHER giant leak under the street that night after everything happened. They were scanning the area in a helicopter and spotted this. At least they caught this one!
Duke
MegaDork
9/17/18 12:00 p.m.
Tony Sestito said:
Also, it's probably like this everywhere, but here in MA, if you are digging around in your yard for a project or a crew needs to dig up the street, they have to call in the local gas company by law to avoid accidentally blowing up the neighborhood. 1-800-DIG-SAFE!
That's true almost everywhere, but unfortunately, most of that locating is dependent on the quality of information provided by the original installer. When we were doing some excavation at my parents' house, we called Miss Utility and had them come out and mark the buried lines in the area.
To be safe, we backed off about 6 feet from the nearest marking. Dug straight down and within 2 miutes we hit and severed the buried 7200 volt distribution line. That was excitiing.
