From: lfsheldon@gmail.com

[Sorry about the content-free fup.  Clumsy fingers]

On 5/15/2014 2:22 PM, Sancho Panza wrote:
> On 5/15/2014 9:05 AM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>> For those of you on Usenet so enamored of the safety record of pipelines
>> for transportation of oil, you may not want to read about last night's
>> disaster:

Unseen because of filter efficiency, but I wonder of we could ease up on
the fire-for-effect but otherwise pointless barbs in favor of something
like:

Today, in [place name] for the [nth] time in [recent history|the past
year|this year|since I can remember] a [pipeline|train|airplane]
{crashed|derailed|blew up] spilling [quantity rounded up for effect] of
[product] and killing [number of dead], injuring [number of people
treated], causing [value in US dollars] in damage; as compared to
incidents involving [competing modes] which killed [number] in the same
period.

>> A ruptured oil pipe near the suburb of Glendale has spilled about
>> 10,000 gallons of crude oil onto streets; initial reports had the spill
>> at 50,000 gallons. The leak from a 20 inch pipe was reported as 12:15
>> am. Thursay, May 15, 2014. It was shut off remotely within 10 minutes of
>> firemen arriving. Despite the shut off, the spill continued for at least
>> 45 minutes.

All the reports I can find say it was IN Glendale, of which Los Angeles
is a suburb.

>> A strip club had to be evacuated.

That is sure relevant.  How about the occupants of all the other
buildings around it?

>> The pipe was under pressure; oil was seen shooting 20 feet into the sky.
>>
>> The oil came from Bakersfield. It's a pumping transfer station sending
>> oil to a storage facility near Bakersfield.

Must be Southern Pacific--sending oil from Bakersfield to Bakersfield.
(That pipe used to be, I do believe, used for transferring oil FROM the
fields west of Bakersfield TO the refineries in El Segundo.

> Seeing as how no cause has yet been offered and the proximity of the
> rupture to the San Andreas Fault, seismic activity is not out of the
> question.

The San Andreas is 50 miles or so east of there, on the other side of
the Sierra Nevada.

I'm going to guess (in total ignorance, actually) that a weld failed.

I grew up not far from there and there might be a jinx of something.

In the late 1940s there was a Golden Eagle distributor in the curve of
San Fernando near Pacific with huge above-ground tanks (not as big
around as you usually see on a tank-farm but taller--like silos).  I
don't know if I ever knew what started it but there was a fire with
flaming gasoline running down the streets and down the storm drains to
the Los Angeles "river" not far away.

Somewhat later(I think) but near enough to the end of WW II that my
mother panicked that the Japs had bombed us a 36" gas pipe leading to
the old Gladding McBean pottery works blew out.  (Speculation was that
sparks from a passing SP train had ignited a developing leak.

Paralleling the gas line underground was a large water line, and above
it a high-voltage power line.

The result was a towering flame (100ft, maybe) with boiling water
falling out of it.  And it turns out the power line was down in it, but
the power wast not shut off, because.....

Chevy Chase Drive in those days operated as an above-ground storm drain
and the boiling water running towards the "river" had little electrical
sparks jumping out of it to the seam between the Portland concrete and
the asphalt concrete.
--
Idioten aangeboden. Gratis af te halen.
h/t Dagelijkse Standaard

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