A young Rockville, Indiana, resident, fourteen-year-old David Crowder, was hunting mushrooms in the woods last week when, all of a sudden, a gas pipeline ruptured nearby. We heard like a jet engine running and then a big boom, and we saw the smoke rising, Crowder said.
People called 911, thinking that something terrible must have happened. Residents within a mile of the explosion were evacuated. Emergency vehicles lined the road, blocking traffic. A Parke County (Indiana) sheriff said the erupting flames reached as high as 700 feet and were visible for miles.
I never saw anything like it, he said, describing the roar as that of "ten jet engines."A six-year-old little girl, Krinjal Patel, said
We thought a plane crashed.The good news is that no one was hurt or killed. Several residents reported how scary it was to hear the explosion and see the massive flames. There were homes and a church near the explosion, and people were worried that they might have been damaged. Apparently no homes or buildings were affected by the explosion and fire.
What is the effect of pipeline explosions on people who experience them? Do they not create anxiety and fear? Could this happen again? Will someone be killed next time? Is this lack of safety damaging to our children? What about six-year-old Kringal? Will she ever feel the same about the place where she lives? Will she ever forget that day she heard that loud boom and saw the flames reaching for the sky?
You can read the whole article in the Terre Haute News here.
2 comments:
What's scary about this story is that it's fast becoming a variation on a theme. Gas is exploding everywhere these days... as just happened at a dentist office in Ohio... or gas is infiltrating aquifers, setting even water on fire! Drilling is making the aberrant commonmplace, and the aberrant is metasticizing invisibly, so there's no telling what could turn scary in a heartbeat.
Let's just keep doing this!
"Here," she said, dusting off a bewildered looking elderly woman. "How much for my old grandmother on 25 acres?"
The Fear Factor has become just a name of a TV show, but the gas industry is fast becoming a real worry for those of us who even know that danger lurks everywhere. Add to that the recent news that small earthquakes are occurring in Texas, possibly caused by hydrofracking or injection wells. We thought "the terrorists" were the real threat. I'm afraid they are not nearly as likely to hurt us as are the accidents caused by gas drilling.
So when we lease the land for drilling, we put ourselves at risk, but we also endanger the lives and futures of our families and neighbors who may not have been consulted as to whether they want to be included in this grand experiment. There is no turning back from the devastating effects of gas drilling. What price are we willing to pay?
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