Posted on 12/22/2023 3:56:15 PM PST by dynachrome
A truck driver transporting compressed natural gas reportedly suffered severe burns when his vehicle crashed into a Glenville, N.Y., bridge and exploded on Thursday evening.
Town Supervisor Chris Koetzle announced that power in the area was knocked out due to the explosion. The driver survived with third-degree burns, he added.
Over 1,200 customers initially lost power in the affected area, according to National Grid, but that number has been steadily improving, CBS 6 Albany reported.
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
I went to lot of propane tanks on fire, along with natural gas leaks, including one where a backhoe ripped a big hole in a main line. I also worked on fires where propane tanks that were involved in house fires exploded.
Propane tank explosions normally happen only when there is a BLEVE (boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion). That typically happens when there is direct flame impingement on a tank and the propane boils in the tank and the pressure relief valve is unable to keep up with the increasing pressure. It is highly unlikely that your propane tank would explode unless it was heated up by a big fire.
The problem with compressed natural gas not as much that it is flammable... it is that it is stored at 3000 psi.
An empty tank is worse
Soon we will see this on Palliwood
Years ago, our neighbor took his truck out of gear & didn’t put on the emergency brake & it rolled back into & knocked over our 500 gallon tank. Had to have the propane company set it back up but we had it moved about 75’ farther away from our house.
I’m suspicious about many recent transport accidents, especially concerning railroads. But I am familiar with this bridge underpass, and it is tight even for two regular-sized cars. To be safe a large truck would probably need to pass under alone. My guess is that this truck driver didn’t realize how narrow the underpass was and entered with traffic coming at him, and he swerved a bit and hit the side. I also heard there was a train going over the bridge when this happened, so that could have been distracting, too. Though that is interesting coincidental timing...
I know that underpass, as well. I don’t believe that a tractor trailer would fit through it, even if it was centered with no oncoming traffic. Just a couple of weeks ago, a tractor trailer had to back up from the underpass all the way to the Alplaus turn (with Glenville PD assistance).
Even if he didn’t see the sign, just visually on approaching it, I would have thought that he would stop to check it out before trying to go through.
Fortunately, he survived and there was no one else injured.
The videos showing a train passing overhead through the flames, was pretty incredible.
I'm nostalgic for the old Glenridge Road bridges. I loved the one that only allowed one car at a time. It's terrible, too, that the town and the bridges have to pay the price for all the navigation apps sending big trucks down these restricted roads.
That’s why God invented pipelines
I’m glad that the driver survived. That accident was a nasty one.
Ours is over 100 feet away. The installers thought I was nuts. And then I put a mound of dirt higher than the tank between it and the house...
Imagine being at work. Your CEO is running about telling people to leave.
That happened to us. Natural gas blowing up from a pipeline that had ruptured.
Not a little one, one from the gulf to the midwest.
“Oh well, it hasn’t exploded yet...”
Please do move it soonest!
The high pressure broken main that my crew and I responded to was nothing like that... but still sounded like a jet taking off. Fortunately, the gas company got it shut down before an ignition source set it off.
Too much digging for this old man.
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They have these machines now called backhoes. :^)
There was construction next door and someone excavating broke the line. I didn’t phrase it right.
The gas was spewing up throwing soil in the air. It didn’t catch fire
That is a fairly common occurrence and usually not all that dangerous. But the leaks often make a lot of noise and will stink up the neighborhood. People nearby will be asked to evacuate. The Ethyl Mercaptan used to make the odorless natural gas stinky is heavier than air, while the gas itself is lighter so it causes people to believe that the concentration in nearby structures is greater than it actually is. I was the leader of a Hazmat team so we had detectors to monitor the actual concentration.
The good thing about natural gas leaks in trenches is that the mixture is usually too rich to ignite near the leak and since it is lighter than air by the time the mixture is lean enough to burn it is usually above the typical ignition source.
Propane on the other hand is heavier than air so it can creep along the ground until it finds an ignition source. At that point it can flash back to the container and cause a fire that can impinge on the tank and eventually cause a BLEVE.
Typically, what we would do for a natural gas lean in a trench was evacuate people nearby then stand by with hose lines to cover the gas company workers while they stopped the leak. If there was an ignition it was not much of an explosion hazard but workers in the trench could be badly burned by the giant blow torch created in the hole.
When propane trucks or rail cars caught on fire or had flames impinging on them, we would try to keep the part of the tank that was being heated, cool until the fire could be put out, the valve could be shut off, or if it was leaking the leak could be plugged... If it was propane that was burning, we did not try to put out the flames from the gas until the gas flow was stopped. Otherwise, you are risking making a stable situation worse.
Because of Hollywood the dangers are different than what most people believe that they are. If a structure somehow has a mixture of gas and air that is in the flammable range then there is the very real risk that it could have a catastrophic ignition. But if it is leaking tank that has gas coming out of it that is on fire... the danger depends on the size of the tank, the size of the leak and whether flames are impinging on the tank.
Most of the propane tank explosions that I have seen have been caused by 20-pound containers being stored in a structure that caught on fire and the tank was heated until it failed.
We once had a rail car filled with propane with flames impinging on it. It was under a very valuable bridge and the pressure relief valve had opened and was on fire. It was quite impressive looking and flames were going up on both sides of bridge with four lanes of rush hour traffic traveling over it.
We had to stop traffic of course. Our concern was to get the fire out that was heating the tank before the bridge was destroyed. Fortunately, the car was still on the tracks and we were able to pull it away from the fire and out from under the bridge fairly quickly. Once we did that we were able to cool the tank off enough that a crew was able to stop the flow from the damaged pressure relief valve.
The bridge was out of service until it could be confirmed by engineers that it was not seriously damaged structurally.
God bless your son.
Glad he’s okay.
I should clarify... the fire from the leak or the tank's pressure relief valve often produces enough heat that it has to be extinguished before it is shut off or plugged. But the flame is typically not extinguished until everything is in place to stop the flow.
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