This is never a good thing:
Pipeline fire in Deer Park, TX. ~10 miles north of Johnson Space Center, and even closer to my Earth home.
Nikon Z9, 200mm f2, 1/320 sec, ISO 25600.
— Don Pettit (@astro_Pettit) 8:56 AM – 17 September 2024
A fire visible from outer space. Not what you want.
There’s lots of coverage of Monday’s fire out there. I’d like to focus on this story about one aspect of it.
The gigantic plume of fire that shot up from a pipeline might have been sparked after an SUV crashed through a parking lot fence and hit an above-ground pipeline valve, Deer Park officials said Monday evening.
The development added new insight and more questions into the series of events that caused a fire that led to the evacuation of neighborhoods in Deer Park and La Porte as natural gas from the pipe burned for hours.
The crash happened around 10 a.m. Monday. Officials said a white SUV broke through a fence on the west side of the Walmart Supercenter lot on Spencer Highway in La Porte.
The SUV continued driving through the field until it hit the pipeline, officials said. The field contained a vertical part of the pipeline that stuck up out of the ground and was surrounded by a fence.
Officials said they were still investigating other details about the SUV, including what happened to its driver.
In a news release Monday night, Deer Park city officials said police and the FBI did not believe the crash was an act of terrorism and called it an “isolated incident.” They did not provide any more information.
Okay, first of all I hope the driver is OK, though to be honest I’m not sure how one might survive this experience. Be that as it may, what I really want to know is, how did this happen? Like, was that valve someplace where it might potentially be driven over? The story says the SUV “broke through a fence on the west side of the Walmart Supercenter” (you can see an initial statement from the city of Deer Park here). Not the strongest of fences, I guess. Was there a barrier around the valve? Any other protection for it beyond that apparently flimsy fence? Maybe going forward there ought to be. Are there other valves like this one out there, with similarly suspect protection?
It may be that this was a true fluke, a one in a million shot that could not have been reasonably anticipated or prevented. All I’m saying is, let’s investigate that and figure it out. I’m sure the pipeline company will do its own investigation – this couldn’t have been good for their business, after all – but we need the cities of LaPorte and Deer Park, Harris County, and the state of Texas to do the same. They’re the ones that can see what the broader risk is and do something to mitigate it. It’s early, the fire is still burning as I write this, so one can expect something to happen in due time. I’m just putting this out there, because we ought to hear about it and learn what the investigations uncover. That’s all I’m asking.
Anyone out there got photos of the site before the fire? Security cameras in the neighborhood. Let’s get some kind of crowd sourcing going on this. Why wait for administration dragging their feet?
They put bollards in front of stores to prevent would be burglars from driving a vehicle through the store front. It seems like those could be put around these valves.
I saw video of fire crews dumping water on nearby houses to keep them from igniting. I feel bad for those people. Also saying the air is fine but also saying that pregnant women, the elderly, people with asthma, etc. stay inside is some classic talking out of both sides of your mouth.
There was a fence at WalMart, and another fence around the valves. The fence obviously wasn’t strong enough to stop a car with a determined driver, but it was a substantial fence. I drive through there often, and it’s easily visible in aerial photos of the fire. I suppose building tank-proof barriers around every pipeline valve could be done, but who would have predicted that little old ladies would try to attack one? There are tens of thousands of those across the country, probably thousands just in the Houston area.
Air quality should be affected little, if any. We burn natural gas in our homes constantly, and this was about the same thing, albeit with perhaps more heavier components.