Boston explosions

[Mike S]

Wild news coming out of the northern suburbs of Boston, where at last count over 50 fires to homes due to gas line explosions.

 

[WesL]

I was listening to the scanner traffic earlier and it was insane. They were pulling assets to help all the way from New Hampshire.
The only thing I can put together is if the gas lines were over pressurized and caused leaks. The real question is what caused that to happen. Human error? Cyberattack?

 

[WesL]

Updated graphics that include gas smells...

 

[Mike S]

I was listening to the scanner traffic earlier and it was insane. They were pulling assets to help all the way from New Hampshire.
The only thing I can put together is if the gas lines were over pressurized and caused leaks. The real question is what caused that to happen. Human error? Cyberattack?

That's the big question. I am going to guess human error. I would think any kind of pre-prepared attack wouldn't be executed during the same time a hurricane is making landfall on the US. Attackers want attention and that's where all the attention is right now.

 

[Jacob]

That's the big question. I am going to guess human error. I would think any kind of pre-prepared attack wouldn't be executed during the same time a hurricane is making landfall on the US. Attackers want attention and that's where all the attention is right now.

Perhaps, but it'd take a pretty big goof-up to overpressure the pipelines. There's usually all kinds of discharge pressure shutdowns at compressor stations and LNG facilities on pipelines. I've actually done the controls at a Columbia Gas compressor station and LNG facility, but thankfully none near the Andover, MA area, heh.

I'm not as familiar with the customer-distribution side of gas, my experience is more on the pipeline side. Perhaps they had a failure on the station/regulators that cut the pressure from the main pipeline, I could see that. Would still be odd that it'd make it all the way to the end customer without lifting reliefs and shutting valves. Granted, maybe that happened and Columbia is trying to keep quiet about it at the moment.

 

[WesL]

@Jacob thanks for jumping in. Nice to have someone that understands the situation better than me. I heard this morning on the drive in that apparently there upgrades taking place in the area. Will be interesting to see what the investigation teams find as they piece this together.

 

[Jacob]

@Jacob thanks for jumping in. Nice to have someone that understands the situation better than me. I heard this morning on the drive in that apparently there upgrades taking place in the area. Will be interesting to see what the investigation teams find as they piece this together.

I could see how upgrades could potentially lead to something like this. Sometimes you have to temporarily take down some safety features during an upgrade to keep things running, though at the places I've worked it's usually internal safety systems, and the suction/discharge valves to the pipeline are usually closed. You still have to test out the upgrades after they've been implemented, and things can go wrong there as well. I'm quite curious to see what the actual cause was.

 

[KoD]

The past couple months I've watched dozens of the US Chemical Safety Board accident investigation videos on YouTube. I can definitely see this being the result of fairly improbable series of errors/flaws.