Thirteen billion liters of lake water in the United States disappeared in an instant

Mining accidents

The residents of DelCambrai had no idea that after a night's sleep, the town's lake was gone, replaced by a giant crater.

Texaco and Wilson Brothers, the drilling contractor, are also the local government's headache, and the inexplicable disaster has caught everyone by surprise.

People who lived in the local community had to leave the town, which now has fewer than 50 homes.

The Penell Lake mine disaster, an engineering disaster that occurred in the United States in the 1980s.

Due to man-made reasons, the original good fresh water lake has become a salt water lake.

The area is near the Gulf of Mexico and New Ibia, Louisiana.

At that time, the freshwater lake was the main source of drinking water in the area. It covered more than five million square meters, but it was only about three meters deep, making it ideal for human habitation.

The local people have an arboretum on a small piece of Jefferson Island, and as long as it grows, the town should be a good area for development.

Because in addition to people living here, there was an oil rig not far from here.

But the problem was this rig. Texaco was in charge of the oil drilling.

As an oil brand owned by Chevron in the United States, Texaco was originally operated by the Texas Fuel Company. Cullinan organized related producers to carry out crude oil exploration in 1902.

Before the acquisition, Texaco was the only company that sold the same brand of gasoline in all U.S. states, as well as in Canada.

At the time, the company was arguably the national light of corporate America, but after Pennerhu, the problem became serious.

Texaco has contracted a diamond crystal salt company that has been operating for decades and has a lot of experience in mining.

Louisiana, by the looks of things, had a good supply of oil and gas, and most of it was oil.

On the morning of November 1980, workers were going about their work as usual when someone noticed something was wrong at the construction site.

That's because the drill bit got stuck at 374 meters in the middle of a drilling operation to find out how much oil there is beneath Lake Penel.

But the bit stuck and the project could not proceed, so the workers tried to release the bit.

As a result, shortly after the drill was released, a series of loud crackles were heard from beneath the pit.

It was clear that something was wrong, and the crew on the rig immediately decided that something was wrong.

The barge was then released, climbed down from the rig, and immediately moved to shore.

A great lake that disappeared in an instant

While people were still trying to figure out what to do with the $5 million rig, the crew was surprised to find that the rig and derrick had tilted and disappeared into the lake 3.3 meters below.

It's slow at first, but the rotation gets faster and faster, and the acceleration gets more and more noticeable.

It looked as if someone had pulled a plug from the bottom of the lake. Soon a huge vortex appeared on the surface of the lake, 400 meters in diameter and moving fast.

At that time, there was a local fisherman working on the lake, hardworking and simple fishermen have never seen such a big scene.

He freaked out and shouted, "The end of the world is coming!"

But that's not the worst part. The worst part is the miners working beneath the salt lake.

Junius Gadisson, an electrician working in a salt mine, was checking the wiring in the corridor when he heard a loud bang followed by a strange noise.

He soon discovered the source of the noise. It came from the fuel drums, which were knee-deep in mud and water and were clashing.

Gaddison was quick to sound the alarm. Leaking water down a mine is not a good thing and is usually a harbinger of disaster.

Thealarm went off and the mine lights flashed three times, indicating that all workers had to evacuate immediately.

Fifty miners were working down the shaft that day, along with other inspectors.

In addition, most of the crew's working level is 450 meters underground.

All they had to do was make a quick getaway to the elevator 396 meters below ground, the only place they could reach the surface.

As a result, when the workers reached the third floor, the lake had already filled up.

It was clear that the salt dome at the mine had been drilled through by drillers on the lake.

It's not like the contractor didn't know there was a salt mine down there, but based on the drilling plan, if it hadn't been a miscalculation, it certainly wouldn't have happened.

But now the most important thing is to escape, or run may be lost, thought the underground miners at that time.

And on the ground, the whirlpool's super suction is wreaking havoc, engulfing not just the rig, but also a barge loading dock, 280,000 square meters of Jefferson Island.

As well as trucks, trees, buildings and even a parking lot. According to one fisherman at the time, "This is definitely not a joke. I thought these people were digging up the earth. Everything on the ground is drying fast, and there's a strong wind..."

The whirlpool's suction was so dramatic that it turned a 19-kilometer canal to the Gulf of Mexico against its current and pulled 11 barges out of the canal.

Then, in an instant, the boats were gone, quickly disappearing into the flooded mine below.

After the accident

In just three hours, Penelho turned into a giant crater, draining 13 billion liters of water.

A ruptured natural pipe also caught fire, sending flames into the sky.

Fearing a gas explosion, the local government contacted the Federal Aviation Administration to reroute all flights in the area.

And that Gulf of Mexico canal, because of the backflow, created a huge waterfall near the pit.

As the canal returned, the hole was slowly filled over the next two days.

How did such a dramatic and horrific disaster happen? What happened after the accident?

Texaco Petroleum and Diamond Crystal Salt quickly investigated when a working 35-centimeter drill bit was drilled into the mine because of a miscalculation that should have bypassed the drilling site for the upper salt mine.

In fact, it was the only possibility, but the evidence and the scene that needed to be investigated had been destroyed by the vortex, and there was no way to find out more.

Thanks to a giant salt mine that holds up the bottom of Lake Penel, everything was fine until it was drilled.

But because of the wrong drilling point, the drill opened a channel between the lake and the salt mine.

Although there may have been only a small opening, and although the salt ore was strong, its structure was susceptible to dissolution.

After the salt is dissolved, the hole will grow rapidly in a second.

The water rushing into the mine further dissolves the columns of salt that support the mine, and the entire mine begins to collapse.

Like a dry pile of sand soaked with water, salt mines collapse very quickly.

In addition, the current upstream in the Gulf of Mexico makes it a temporary entrance, creating a waterfall as high as 50 meters.

Both the Delcambre Canal and Zhuhong Bay are brackish waters, thus changing the nature of Lake Peniel's subsequent waters.

Water from the lake flowing down into the mine drains air, which is blasted out as compressed air, creating geysers more than 100 meters high above the mine.

Amazingly, no one was injured or killed in the engineering accident.

At the time of the accident, due to the timely operation of electricians and orderly evacuation of miners, eventually all the workers working in the mine escaped.

he ships that had been sucked under the hole later resurfaced under the buoyancy of the saltwater, most notably Texaco and Wilson and Diamond Crystal Salt.

An investigation into the accident led to an out-of-court settlement of $12.8 million and an additional $32 million in compensation for the mine, which was closed in 1986.

Although the exact cause of the accident was never determined, it was used as a textbook example of mine disasters.

Until now, the use of natural gas in Penel Lake has had a psychological impact on local residents.