The Lake Peigneur Giant Sinkhole Disaster 1980
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 พ.ค. 2022
- The in-depth story of the Lake Peigneur Drilling Accident: When The Earth Swallowed a Lake.
November 20, 1980, is a new day at Lake Peigneur in Louisiana. Some 9 miles north of the Vermilion Bay in the Gulf of Mexico, a charming, calm lake is a popular resort for fishermen and nature lovers..
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• How Can a Lake Vanish ... by Loren Klein
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I am absolutely stunned that none of the miners were killed. It seemed like everything about this disaster was working against them, it really is a testament to how important it is to train employees on what to do during an emergency.
I have to give credit to both the management and the workers of the salt mine. Management for taking safety seriously, developing good evacuation procedures, and training the miners in those procdedures, The miners for executing the evacuation flawlessly. They conducted a successful evacuation in what was pretty much a worst case scenario. Had they not executed it to perfection, some or all of those miners would have died.
@@russlehman2070 still a better transportation system with higher capacity wouldn't have hurt.
@@thorben3625 I'm wondering why there wasn't some sort of ladder, as an alternative way out.
@@szr8 Probably because a vertical 1300-foot climb would have taken them hours, and that's if they didn't fall off the ladder from muscle fatigue.
@@szr8 You mean a 1300 foot ladder?
It's ludicrous to call this a "natural disaster." It was human error, made while performing a human activity, above a mine dug by human hands.
The Narrator is full of shit. Plain and Sinkhole.
how can any one call this a Natural disaster its obvious it was the drilling 😮
Its obvious the mine/company owners were well connected. To everyone there it was a nightmare, to them it was a hassle calling in some favors to make the negative attention go away. Ofc no one knows anything or who/what is responsible. (spoiler alert: they're responsible)
To the tune of zero human lives lost.
What an interesting word. LudIcrous 𝓁𝓊𝒹𝒾𝒸𝓇ℴ𝓊𝓈 𝐥𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐬𝐬𝐬𝐬
That electrician had that amazing intuition to alert all 55 miners, and that one miner as well, who went to get the other miners who weren't able to catch the signal.
Its evidently significant how good training weilds benefits.
he's hero for sure, but "knee-deep torrent of water violently carrying entire fuel canisters" is a bit more blatant a sign than "intuition" lol
The electrician was a bright spark indeed!
Can we all just appreciate how all the miners were able to survive, making their way up the slow elevator even as a lake was falling on them
But the llake would take only seconds to fill the entire mine. How did the miners get out from it even at such a low pace?
@@abcdefgh6121 The flow of water was slow at first. Only when the salt pillar columns were dissolved did the entire thing collapse. It took in total 3 hours to drain the lake so there was enough time. It was all explained in the video.
@@Shunned_Potato Well the video is completely wrong on many things and some of images shown are not modern salt mine or not even salt mines or have any idea how big a salt mine is you drove everywhere . Look up pictures of a 35 ton dump truck , standing next to a tire on a machine like this you might be able to stretch and touch the top of the tire and yes Texaco should have gotten the blame for this disaster but when your talking to one of the states or countries biggest companies things get swept under the rug.
@@GregPourciau The tires on the 35 ton trucks are like 5 to 6 foot tall. Do you understand that all slat mines are not the same. This was a small salt mine not some great big thing. It was started in 1919 they was still using old school stuff .
"The lake is falling!" is stranger to hear than "The sky is falling!"
It is so incredible that no one died. Had that electrician not gone and checked that noise when he did, all 55 miners could have easily perished.
...it's called 'PROFESSIONAL TRAINING'
It is incredible! I was cringing the whole time until the part where they said everyone escaped! What a relief.
2022 just hearing about it now.
Yep
Nobody died, except for an entire ecosystem.
I was a Geology graduate student at University of Southwestern Louisiana when this happened. I had given tours in the mine the month before when the Gulf Coast Geologic Society held their yearly conference in nearby Lafayette, Lousiana. Texaco had helped me by providing data from another area for my grafuate thesis and I talked with the Geologist that was in charge of the disaster well. What happened is this: Diamond owned the mineral rites for the lake since the 1930's. Texaco contracted to pay Diamond royalties for oil produced based on 1930s rates. By 1980 this was peanuts and Diamond was incensed that Texaco wouldn't consider negotiating higher royalties based on 1970-1980s rates. When Texaco contacted Diamond to check on the latest extents of their mine shafts, Diamond ignored them and never responded. Texaco said "well it must not be a factor since Diamond didn't feel the need to contact them." They picked where they wanted to drill, and as they say, the rest is history!
as allways, most valued information are in comments ;)
I'm disappointed that you didn't go for the obvious and say "... and Diamond was _salty_ that Texaco wouldn't consider negotiating higher royalties..."
@@stormisuedonym4599 🙄
Mm intresting.
Maybe I'm naive in the way I see this, but I don't understand how anyone could knowingly drill in a lake over or in the near vincinity of a mine that lies below said lake and think "Yeah, that seems save, I see no issues". I have no idea how the permit procedure for that would work, but methinks there is at least one geologist (or someone along those lines) that has to sign off on that. So I would think that one would try to separate those two things by as much as possible.
This story is always one of my favorites just because no people lost their lives directly from this. It amazes and elates me just how well the safety precautions for everyone worked out (plus a few close encounters with good timing). It ended up being the most insane ever disaster and everyone handled it perfectly.
True. There should be a movie about if.
My husband Michael Arceneaux worked in the Diamond Crystal Salt Mine under Lake Peignor. He was working in the salt mine the day the dome of the mine was punctured by the drill bit from the barge above. He was the first to notice the large 55 gallon diesel drums floating in the water inside the mine. He immediately called his supervisor Earl Serraille to report it. His supervisor then asked Michael to call Pierre at the top of the mine. His quick response helped to save all the lives of the workers in the mine that day.
He was interviewed for another documentary in 2010. Some of that interview was used in the resulting documentary that his friends in Louisiana have told him they have seen, although we have not.
He was the Hero of this whole story and those miners owe him their lives.🤗🐝❤️
Great comment-1= well put together,2=factual in sequence of events with no repeatful statement, I wish I could comment like this.🤙👍👏😉
The smartest person involved in this event was the genius who "lost" those documents in the sink-hole. Pure Machiavellian brilliance 👌
Yeah, as if there were no copies at headquarters….
That's the flush all incriminating documents down the drain Trump defense
@@Derekzparty that's Hillary's MO. 6 billion worth of military contracts vanished (money paid to her partner in crime politicians that own shell companies) and of course "wiping her server with a cloth".
@Bill Neither are angels but only one has a record of flushing documents
Why were paper shredders invented?
It's amazing that no one died in this incident. Kind of a relief in comparison to most of the other disasters you've covered.
Repeating trainings works. Unlike what recently happened into Texas mass shootings.
Not just stuff he covered, but everyone covers. Nice to see a landscape damage-oriented video rather than a loss of human life-oriented video.
u really believe that? come on man, most workers were undocumented
I think like a single dog died, but like… still.
9:13 I laughed so hard at this
imagine being like a tour guide in Louisiana and you mention "for about 40 hours our highest waterfall in Louisiana was the 150ft waterfall in Lake Peigneur" and you tell them the single most greatest story you can ever tell to a person... ever.
No lives lost during this whole scene. That's amazing to me. Thank goodness for the person who noticed and quickly evacuated the miners.
As a Safety officer for the gas network in Queensland Australia, it shocks me at times how contractors play against the odds and run the risk of having similar accidents. History should be highly valued, not ignored.
Really? This sounds like a credible sequence of events to you? It sounds absolutely bonkers to me - are probabilities, safety protocols (plain common sense) a rarity in mining and exploration? I knew morality was, but...
If 50M$ is worth the risk, why not do it? History tells us that taking such risks is highly profitable, so the contractos are not ignoring it.
Unfortunately pure greed is usually the motivation of corporate America. The have little desire to listen to safety precautions, especially if means it will effect profits. Australia has better policies than America in general
@@8675-__ That is so shameful. I don't know the logic behind it but it would seem like there is an agenda to downsize America's population in a very macabre way.
I was on an offshore rig in Indonesia drilling in 1700'wd, we planned to drill into a salt dome with reduced rop. The salt dome was reached earlier than anticipated resulting with a 42bbl kick on a connection. We abandoned the rig around midnight. I was part of a skeleton crew to return to the rig and kill the well, first attempt resulted with a sub sea blowout so we abandoned the rig again. It took nearly a month to kill that well.
It's amazing how twisted and wrong this story has gotten ,I was a 20 year old Electrician ,June Gaddison was my boss ,smoking in the mine was prohibited and he had walked out of area (1000')where our storage and lockers where to smoke a cigarette and he did hear fuel barrels banging around and shined his headlamp down the room (crosscut is another way to say it) and saw water pouring over a salt barricade across room to prevent people going into old parts of the mine and he came running back to our shop and hollering ,he did blink or switch off and on main power to mine below , Earl the footman(last name escapes me Brave man he received an award) on our shift jumped on his tractor and went down to make sure word got to them ,some ran to shaft and to mechanic shop to warn them and to call cage down ,they had trouble get the hoist operator because at that time he was talking to drilling company who had called to tell them to evacuate us from the mine ,we started using backup call buzzer which buzzes in hoist control room by the time the cage got down we could see water coming down the room and wiping out the main telephone backboard ,I was shoved onto cage and 11 or 12 of us got out ,the miners already down in the 1300' level (we only had just started ramps down to 1500') they couldn't call on phones so they traveled up the ramps with whatever could move with 2 front end loaders in front what kept water back was the rise in elevation of the room the leak started kept the water contained till they got to that level and assembled at emergency designated point and sent people to try to get to main shaft (cage) and also to emergency shaft (air shaft smaller cage could be sent down) used back up phone wind up phone and were told to try to go up old ramps to next level which they did using front end loaders to clear road of fallen scales so smaller vehicles could pass they proceeded to be taken up to surface the only injury was to office(mine) clerk she tripped and fell on a scale they had a tendency to remove there battery and lights (heavy, she was a very tiny lady) and yes everyone couldn't believe how close they started drilling it was not far from our barge dock but they did have wells all over the area and yes it was reported that when the lake drained in the canal started pulling water from the gulf ,shrimp boats in Delcambre were sitting in the mud and the cages and skips sitting and plugging shafts where heard to travel up 7 story mill building and hit there pulley block at top of mill that's all I remember.
Wow. Thank you for sharing your story.
This should be pinned as top comment.
Incredible - thanks for posting that
All in one long run-on sentence? Seriously? Louisiana public schools I assume?
@@joeuser633 Yes, the original poster’s story uses poor sentence form, but are you aware that your post also contains incomplete sentences? Perhaps try to appreciate this amazing and personal narration on its merits, not its technical faults.
I can't believe that lake went from 10 feet deep to 200ft. That's insane.
We have a local lake that started off flat, then became a dip, it was realised that pillars from the old iron ore mines below were slowly giving way. So they drilled down to flood the chambers and we now have a natural and stable lake for the benefit of the community.
I live about 20 miles from where this took place. I've heard my mother talk about what happened there that day quite a few times. It's a miracle that all 55 of those miners survived. Just goes to show that proper training can go a very long way in saving lives.
I'm just going to agree with most people here and say, "Wow, a mining disaster where everyone survives? Incredible." And the miners were patient with a slow elevator while a lake drained on top of them. That's good emergency training. Often in these disasters there's poor training (coupled with short cuts for the budget). This is a possible example of a legit accident.
I would argue though, that the low capacity and slow elevator could have spelled disaster. I know there has to be a balance of practicality, budget, and safety, but a ~8 person capacity on a slow elevator when there are around 50 people to transport on a (presumably) otherwise normal work day is a bit concerning. That's 7 trips, though it could probably be reduced to 6 or even 5 or 4 if you were less strict about capacity limits considering the emergency situation.
I salute you captain obvious
Read this top comment and now no longer need to watch the video 😑
It looks a lot more like the salt mining company had insurance fraud get out of control. The simplest answer with a cash insentive. It was Americans.
"a legit accident" : - D
Once he started talking about a mine I knew what was gonna happen and 100% expected little no to survivors. That is truly incredible
I lived in a town where there were unknown mines all over. Homeowners were required to have insurance in case their homes collapsed into one-- it happened to a few homes in my neighborhood. Some tunnels were never documented at all, while others were not accurately mapped because they were made so long ago. It's not that surprising that their attempt to drill nearby a mine went so catastrophically wrong.
This disaster always fascinated me, but I didn't realize it was caused by them drilling into a massive preexisting mine. I always heard it reported without enough detail and thought the drill alone caused it-- this makes so much more sense to me now. 😂
Did you live in Springfield?
@@mcciaccio Nope.
Same with my hometown in SW Wyoming. Older parts of the town, but not the OLD parts of the town, are undermined. They used to just pump some kind of expanding foam into the mines, but someone got the idea to just collapse the mines with a big weight dropped from a crane! Dynamic Compaction. Made sense to my 10yo brain. Anyway, naturally they collapsed some of the mine shafts and messed up the foundations on some houses, one was a few miles away. Crazy to think that there's random unmapped tunnels underneath the city.
Yep they didn't want to report what actually happened because the demonization of oil had just begun and they needed the disasters to keep happening to brainwash the public to commit suicide by dumping oil production.....like RIGHT NOW!!!!
Charlotte, nc is the same way. We just had an undocumented mine shaft collapse under a house 2 or 3 years ago
This could make a really fantastic movie. The sense of escalating tension as the problems on the surface escalate while the workers in the mine carry on about their day, unaware of what's happening above... paired with the grim realization that only a few men can evacuate at a time as the mine fills with water. Even after the disaster is in full swing on the surface, there are compelling stories to tell about the people on the boats and barges trying to get away from the vortex.
Drilling… above a giant underground salt mine… through a giant lake. Brilliance.
Glad you said it. Exactly what I was thinking
What could possibly go wrong?!
Wasn't the Nike phrase "Just Do It" coined around this time?
I don't suppose this was a big Nike ad that went wrong.
Given this was soon after, the actual inspiration, death row prisoner Gary Gilmore's request to "Let's Do It" as his last words.
Still it does encapsulate the spirit of "doing it" without any further consideration at least.
Humans👏
Makes one wonder what kind of engineering that was?
I worked at a mine that was just being opened. There were old mines in the area that were supposed to be separated by ten or so meters of solid rock. as they begin to actually cut new tunnes int the rock face they got back several hundred meters and their multi-ton mining machine simply vanished down a hole. the stone had collapsed and eroded after the old mines were closed until only a few feet of sandstone and shale separated the floor of the new tunnel, from the void below. The operator was a distance behind the machine, using a remote control linked to the machine by a control bundle of cables. fortunately for him, it was fitted with a quick disconnect to keep him from being pulled into the machine if the cables snagged. or the machine fell forty or fifty feet into a hole that wasn't supposed to be there.
By the way, coal miners are capable of impressive speed when they are running for their lives Usain Bolt would have been impressed. I was outside at the time and set a personal best in the "Hundred-meter get the %*@ out of Dodge"
One of the hardest jobs especially before recent technologies came along, was a surveyor in a mine, as once down the bottom of the shaft there are few indicators of direction.
As someone that grew up in the coal fields of WV, I can absolutely appreciate this post. I grew up my whole life hearing stories about mining from my Grandfather, my Dad, Uncles, and Cousins.
It amazing to hear your stories and very interesting to see comments from you who were actually there, geologists, miners etc., all with your stories from different perspectives. You add a lot more to the original story of the video. And I am glad everyone survived.
Hahahaha For real about these guys moving faster than they ever have in their lives. Hahaha
@@HollywoodCreeper running for their lives one minute laughing their ass off about it the next literally as soon as they realized everything was over the jokes and giving each other a hard time started
So, you're telling me a group of rich dudes decided to drill an oil hole in the middle of a beautiful lake knowing full well that there was a mine under it? "tRuSt mE i'M aN EnGiNeEr"
“I think we’ll put this right over here” (think that’s the line lol)
“Oh shit I better get out of here!”
7:15 this disaster could have been so much worse. It should be used as a model for "How to evacuate in a disaster if you want to survive". Kudos to all the miners who kept their cool and stayed alive!
What I've seen from other sources is that Texaco settled the lawsuits (probably for a shipload of money, but amounts were not disclosed), and tied everybody up with non-disclosure agreements. Clearly some kind of major screwup resulted in the drilling contractor drilling that hole in the wrong location .Whether the drillers messed up, or they were given incorrect coordinates is anybody's guess.
Texaco had access to maps showing that the salt mine extended beneath the planned wellbore, but it was ignored or missed. This was an open secret around Texaco drilling group. I worked there for many years.
The Exxon Valdez. Anyone remember?
@@sidstovell2177 The ship? What about it?
@@jrow84 oil spill.
37,000 tons of oil spilled in Prince William Sound, Alaska 1989.
@@sidstovell2177 Yeah.....What's it got to do with this drilling accident?
Sometimes it's a breath of fresh air when everyone survives in these situations! Good on them
That chimney in the lake is an interesting reminder. What a wild event and what a miracle no souls lost. This video actually left me feeling educated without feeling depressed. Love that.
I remember this and all the almost unbelievable yet incredible events that left our entire Southern half of the state stunned! We had just been fishing there less than a week before and I can still hear my brother in-law exclaiming, "No way! We just on the lake less than a week ago! I don't believe it swallowed that rig and those barges!" Well it sure as hell did! We didn't get all the news at once and all the events in the mine weren't found out for a day or two later. I know I have been in a salt mine and the tunnels go for miles and can hold a lot of water if ever flooded. Thanks for reminding us of this astonishing disaster. To this day, I still live here in Louisiana, I don't recall ever hearing of even one loss of life.
The 1926 Barnes-Hecker mining disaster near Ishpeming, Michigan was somewhat similar to this. Routine blasting in the mine, 600 feet below the surface, opened into a natural passageway connecting to swamps on the surface. In that case, only one man escaped, by climbing ladders to the surface from the 800 foot level of the mine. At least 51 men died.
Also in 1924 there was another similar event at the Milford Mine in Minnesota. Water from a nearby lake found its way into the mine, killing 41 miners.
Wow. Kudos to the miners for staying calm in that situation. That’s crazy.
Randy LaSalle died a few years ago. I knew him well and still miss his energy and "Here I am; send me!" attitude. Absolutely lovely person.
My heart was beating like crazy, I'm so glad no one got hurt.
This goes to show you how important safety procedures and training are! Good job to the guys on the rig and in the mine for keeping their heads cool.
Didn’t the idiots on the rig cause this disaster by drilling into a mine?
I read this as "The Lake Peigneur Giant Shrimp Disaster 1980" and got incredibly excited for a brief few seconds.
Better than the Lake Peigneur Giant Stinkhole Disaster
Giant shrimp is an avengers level threat
Read it as Lake Penis Giant Sinkhole Disaster and I was like...
"... Intriguing."
Godzilla shrimp be making you trippin'
We lived right up the road (675) from Lake Peigneur for over 4 years. It was my favorite place to visit because of the Botanical Garden, and the old home is the most special one I've ever been in, built a certain way that would cool the house. With Louisiana heat and humidity, There's a lot to be said for that! They have a small theater where you can see the video of This Disaster. The Delcambre Shrimp Festival is held every year, with lots of music. It was the last outing my husband and I had before he passed away. It was 100° in the shade, but they do have lots of big fans. Nevertheless, We probably should have stayed home.
Reminds me of the mine accident of Lengede in Germany, where a settling pond broke through into the mine in 1963. The mine was quickly flooded, resulting in the death of 29 miners. Two weeks after the accident, eleven miner could be rescued throuh a 40 meters deep and 60cm wide drilled hole. The survival of those eleven miners became famous as the wonder of Lengede.
That would be a great dark history video. You could use footage from the 2003 movie "Das Wunder von Lengede"
This is the wildest thing I have ever heard of . I was cringing thinking that some or all had perished but relieved to find that everyone was saved . Amazing none the less .
I'd heard of this disaster but not in such great detail. Can't imagine what it must have been like waiting for that elevator.
I wonder how they decided who went up next?
I'm going to guess young men with children were sent up first. People were like that then. They looked out for each other.
@@828enigma6 One would imagine that men with young children would be evacuated first, there doesn't seem to have been any panic. I think this is down to the training the men had received and the fact that the mine had previously had less serious floods. The trapped men wouldn't have been aware of the seriousness of their situation. There is no evidence that human behaviour in life threatening situations has changed in the recent past. For every "women and children first", calm evacuation of a doomed ship like Titanic, there is a panicked survival of the strongest example such as the SS Arctic.
Why would children be at the bottom of a salt mine? And people back then were just as bad as today.. there just weren't cameras everywhere
@@shoelesblondlady lmao, re-reading the thread I see it could be construed that way, although I already made the point about human behaviour not having changed. 🤣
watching a platform vanish into a lake that's supposed to only be 10ft deep must have been terrifying to watch. The Earth was hungry that day!
It's amazing how everyone survived. In todays mines evacuations are alerted using a gas that is released into the mine. Stench gas (Ethyl Mercaptan) is a pungent gas resembling rotten eggs, it is released through ventilations shafts. Miners are trained to recognise this strong odour as an evacuation alarm
Mercaptan is what they put in natural gas.
In Louisiana we also have the Bayou Corne sinkhole that destroyed a entire community, not in the sense that it swallowed all the houses but that almost the entire community was forced to move elsewhere. It was a lovely Cajun hideaway.
I just watched that too 🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾
Reminds me of Picher, Oklahoma.
Holy cow! I can't imagine the outright terror those present felt when that unthinkable event occurred.
The ability to maintain their composure and not panic as the mine filled around them. Having no idea if the floors above were actually safe and only knowing when the elevator rattled back down for another load not knowing if it would come back down again.
@@megladon6 Exactly! These people who have to work under such conditions are very brave. They should be proud they were able to be so professional in keeping their wits about them under such an extremely dangerous situation. It couldn't have ended in a better outcome that not one life was lost in this disaster!💜💓
After watching so many videos where horrible accidents happen and everyone dies, this is seriously a refreshing change of pace. I’m genuinely very happy to hear everyone survived
My responses are numerous: first is the ineptitude and greed of money grubbing huge corporations and the worship of oil; second is the respect of this planet and the overwhelming power of water; most importantly is the sanctity of human life and the absolute necessity of safety training. I am jaw-dropped by each of these issues and that everyone survived. Thank you for this documentary!
I do recall hearing about this, but it was so bizarre I couldn’t fathom what happened. This video explains it so well. I’m really surprised a movie of this disaster hasn’t been made!
Lol
You have the real thing, you want fiction too?
@@abelis644 sure. Why not? It makes for an interesting story, and a warning as to how human error and hubris can cause devastation. Besides, you and I have seen this video, but there are many, many more people who haven’t.
"Fathom"?...ooh what a pun🙂
Why not? We have a movie of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster.
No one would believe it, the only difference between fiction and reality is thst fiction has to be somewhat believable
Hundreds of years from now if records aren't kept archeologists will be scratching their heads trying to figure out how all the large odd boat, vehicle, tree, docks and big-rig debis got into that salt mine.
🤣😅🤣😅🥰
Thank you for doing such a thorough job ; really excellent work here .
Glad no one was killed but a shame really that the water is now brackish and not like it used to be .
My mother in law was in charge of doing the work comp claims for the injured workers from this.. We were watching a video about it years ago, and I said, "I feel sorry for whoever did the work comp adjusting on this.. it must've been a nightmare." and she replied, "Then you feel sorry for me and it was a nightmare."
This has to be one of the craziest accidents I've ever heard of. Unbelievable
Yeah, everyone staring in extreme disbelief with their jaws dropped. “Where is the lake going ?????”
But not so unusual. Look for "Lengede" in Germany where a sedimentation pond flooded a coal mine. The trapped miners were rescued by a "bomb". Which is a one-man capsule to be lowered down a new bore hole drilled to the air pocket where they had been trapped.
I grew up along the Gulf Coast amd sinkholes are a bigger problem down here than most people know, Louisiana has had an especially bad problem with them over the past few years, like swallowing entire houses and making neighborhoods unlivable
Probably due to fracking
I'm from Louisiana and the most recent "incident" happened with Cargill, who were drilling in Avery Island (at the oldest salt mine in North America). Cargill had received dozens of safety violations in the year leading up to the incident in December 2020 where 2 people died in a roof collapse. After a few weeks, Cargill announced that they were shutting the mine down.
It's so tragic and I feel for their families. I don't understand why these safety boards allow companies to continue to operate with all those violations (kidding; it's money).
@@somethingsomething404 Mining for salt is not fracking.
@@ninaappelt9001 I wasn’t taking about salt mining
Adding that to my list of natural disasters to avoid
How 'convenient' all the documents were lost. That was just beautiful:).
Insane! Amazing that no one died and an excellent point in why you train for emergencies. Odd that all the documents for the drilling platform were on the platform.
Similar to the Knox mine disaster near Wilkes-Barre, PA in 1959. They had been mining below the Susquehanna River for many years, but one day the water broke through into the mine, more or less like the lake in this one. Quite a few people did get out, some coming out miles from where they went in; people used to say they could walk from Wilkes-Barre to Scranton without coming to the surface. But, the ones closest to the opening did not have time to get out. The river ran into the hole for days. People dumped railroad cars from the mine into the hole, but it was too big for that to be successful. The mines filled with water and never resumed operation.
Devastating for the families of those lost.
Kudos to all those professionals for keeping their heads cool and clinging to their training. Character in action.
Wow!! So glad you watched the history channel special on this . And even used some of their footage! Nothing new here folks.
Wow this is incredibly interesting and so glad those miners survived!!! I will appreciate the salt we get, I completely forgot that they actually mined salt!!! Talk about hard work!! And that whirlpool would be so scary to see!!
If you are reading this at night, you should get some sleep, and don't stress about everything going on in the world, or what you are going through. Don't dwell on things from the past, don't stress on your future. Just live your life, because you only get one. Do whatever makes you happy, not what other people want from you. For me, I'm gonna wake up tomorrow morning, get hit the gym, and cherish life for the amazing blessing that it is. I hope you do the same and have an amazing day as well!
Shut up
What an amazing thought , social media has ruined our sleep
I remember this making the national news when it happened. Watching decades old, full grown trees disappear into the lake like a bathtub drain was disconcerting to say the least. It wasn’t known to the general public what had happened for quite a while. The video of the disaster was later a feature story on a weekly program called “That’s Incredible!”.
I don’t remember hearing that it was an oil exploration drilling that had tapped into a salt mine at the time, but I was in college by the time the full investigation results had been published, so I was rather preoccupied with school and work.
One of the most interesting videos of oil drilling I've seen in 68 years of life as as a contractor
Wow, as a caver, I would love to find out what the interior of the mine/new base of the lake looks like now. I wonder if it would be possible to dive down there and see how much of the mine is intact, and where the rig is, etc?
Zero visibility. The water is like thin chocolate milk.
@@blackhawk7r221 ah well
@@emmahealy4863 Yea, sucks being a diver in South Louisiana. No clear water at all. We even have to go offshore 6-7 miles just to get into semi-clear green water.
The dismantlement of the mill buildings was the first project I successfully obtained for my new employer. There is more to this story.
1. Diamond Crystal had erroneously excavated the horizontal shaft too close to the edge of the salt dome and there was always a trickle of water. This had not been reported to the DNR of Louisiana.
2.. This was a barge drilling rig, common to what is used for inland waters. While floating, it had spuds which anchored it to one position.
3. Two young miners went to the edge of that horizontal shaft to smoke a joint during a break. They noticed that the constant trickle had increased a good bit.
4. It was the mill which officially was no longer there by 1986, the mine had been cancelled before that.
5. The mill building was constructed of large Douglas Fir timbers with bronze bolts and shank nails. Each level had tongue in groove Douglas Fir floors topped with Hardrock Maple flooring for wear and tear of forklifts and small cranes. None of the wood was actually salvageable due any steel nail would rust quickly from the salt impregnation. Stainless steel would develop stress cracks from the same salt and why bronze was used.
so, pot smokers saved the day... LMAO!
@@oldrrocr bingo, I haven't been one but glad they did it
@@oldrrocr that was per the maintenance supervisor for the mine and the mill above
That no one was killed is almost incredible.
That this incident is only occasionally the subject of TH-cam videos, is bewildering.
I first heard of this disaster many years ago while I was watching the disaster episodes of the Discovery series Modern Marvels on TH-cam but I think they were taken down later due to copyright.
My ancestors lived on the banks of that lake. Heard many tales of buried treasure, giant alligators , and ghost in my childhood. My grandfather and great uncles all told of the same tales. Must be true 😊.
I'm completely amazed that they all survived. Not many places of business can execute a proper safety evacuation let alone a drill.
I recall hearing that the miners used a different coordinate system than the oil industry , but the engineers on the oil platform just assumed the coordinates were identical in both systems ( they aren't )
I can say from years of doing landscaping & working for an excavation company that basically nothing is ever built identical to the original plans. And so-called "as built" plans can also be very wrong. Though as-built plans tended to be far more accurate as a whole.
I would expect the standards for a mine to be a bit higher than when installing electrical conduit in the backyard of a house, but those are some pretty long distances they have to deal with as well. Sure classical Greeks dug a tunnel from both sides in order to secure a water supply and when the tunnels met up they were just a tiny bit off. Showing that thousands of years ago people had a handle on the math needed to survey underground things like this. But still it doesn't take a big mistake to throw these measurements off by a considerable margin.
Does this mean I think the mine gave out a faulty plan? No, it doesn't. It does mean that I'm not ruling it out.
Things humans build are only as good as the humans themselves are. If a mistake is made do they immediately announce it so it can be fixed, or do they do the 'human' quick-fix that we often do in our personal lives ? How many of us have done something we are slightly ashamed of & wish we had not, and regret forever - most of us I bet ! But some mistakes are deadly as this video shows !
Mines are one of the best documented endeavors. At least in our times. Most problems arise if there is rogue mining or mines from the middle ages which have mostly no documentation.
I also wonder what plans the drilling company or Texaco had made by themselves. In the end they were exploring for oil and had to find out the exact location where they had to drill. And the salt mine was definitely not building shafts where there was no salt. So to hit the mine smack dab in the middle looks like a major error and not like being a few feet off. But it could be they didn't want to go as deep to the mine level because the oil should be on the side and the top of the salt dome. Some things don't really line up here. And the settlement was a adding to the hush-up to avoid further investigation to simply cover the a## of some higher ups.
I have seen this so many times and I will watch this story EVERY TIME. CRAZY.
I've probably heard this story 50 times, but this is by far, the best telling of it.
I was there shortly after the well collapsed. I flew a seaplane over the lake and at that time the lake was a mud flat, water was going down the hole and the Delcambre Canal was flowing north from the Intracoastal Canal through the fishing village of Delcambre (pronounced Del come). That entire area is barely above sea level. I doubt that the lake was more than three or four feet deep before or after the accident, certainly not 200 feet. I still remember seeing a location canal around the southeast side of the lake that would have been about 10 feet deep to allow towing the drilling rig that was mounted on a barge to it's location the northbound flow was going along this manmade canal before disappearing down the hole. The equipment popped up later after the mine filled up. The details about the mine operator and the drilling company sound pretty close. The intention was to drill where the salt tunnels were not but the coordinates were incorrect and the drill bit penetrated one of the shafts. At this time the rig lost circulation. When well drilling a mixture of barite and water is used to prevent high pressure hydrocarbons from blowing out the well and to lubricate and cool the drill bit and to circulate the drill shavings to the surface where the drilling fluid (called mud) is filtered and sent back down. When the drill bit broke into the shaft the drilling fluid went into the salt mine, the drill bit got stuck from lack of lubrication and the rig lost circulation.
I was a seaplane charter pilot in the Louisiana oilfield for 20 years and earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Petroleum Technology from Nicholls State University.
The story is amazing, although a depth of 200 feet didn't seem possible to me either. Since the area is barely above sea level, as the video correctly states, it's consistent with the rest of South Louisiana, so depths of that measure just aren't possible. It was a great accounting though, and this incident certainly helped to usher in enhanced security measures within the oil industry. When they are adhered to, incidents like the later Horizon tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico can be avoided.
They said it was 10 feet before but 200 after. due to the collapse of the mine. but interesting story! I remember this from the news in 1980
@@gregjohnson43 i've seen good pictures of the hole, i don't doubt its pretty deep after washing everything down into the mine, whole thing was near empty and the backflow from the gulf was what refilled it
for a very technical script, saying that the lake ended up at 200 feet is basically a poor joke. the sinkhole increased its depth superficially. to me the lake is no longer even a lake, but a manmade sinkhole that has filled with seawater. it has an illegitimate water depth as a result of the collapsed mine beneath its original lakebed.
I remember hearing about this years and years ago. Still the craziest disaster I've ever heard of.
First time I heard about this... I guess the news of Mt St Helens blowing up dominated everything out west.
My uncle represented Diamond Crystal during the lawsuit. Afterwards he and my father purchased the property after Diamond vacated the property and capped the remaining shafts.
Their was a office building that we used as a camp and I fished off the barge dock catching redfish and speckled trout.
The area of the lake where the rig went down is approximately 200ft deep.
Very fond memories of me and my high school friends camping and partying out there in the late eighties!!
The property was sold in the nineties.
I'm glad no lives were lost :) crazy how drastically the lake changed though.
Fascinating. I can't believe this is the first time I've heard of this disaster. Thank you for the incredible presentation
I knew about the incident from the Videos, but none of all this detailed background. Thank you for another bit of quality documentary!
My son was an underground diamond driller for DeBeers, up inside the Arctic Circle, and I prayed every day for his safety. happily he's not doing that work anymore, saying it's for younger men 🙏🙏🙏
I just started binging these vids as I am just finding this channel. They’re really good! I was shook when this video started as this happened on my birthday. Not just my birthday, like, it literally happened on the day I was born. Weird!
This is a testament to why safety training and protocols are so important, and look at the success. All miners and drillers survived. Fantastic.
And mostly luck
Also why risk assessments, government regulations and permits are important, not just being allowed to drill into a salt mine through a large body of water with boats and wildlife on/in it, no questions asked. What could possibly go wrong. This. This is what.
I have visited Live Oak Gardens several times. In the late 1980's you could visit the upper levels of the Joe Jefferson house where they had a room decorated with the Bayless camelia breeding awards and the elaborate segmented 3D model of the salt mine which the tour guides assured us had been expertly crafted with just enough lies to keep Texaco off the hook for the drill piercing the mine. They also have a little theater where they play a contemporary documentary about the disaster througout the day. The gardens were closed for awhile, and now that they've reopened you can no longer visit the upper levels of the Jefferson house; the fire marshal decided that the narrow enclosed staircases were unsafe in case of an emergency and that tour groups could not be allowed up there. The offshore chimney seen in the video is still there, the only remnant of the Bayless' recently completed modern mansion which remains. It's a highlight of a relaxing driving tour of the river and bayou parishes of southern Louisiana which can hit many scenic wildlife areas, antebellum homes, and one of a kind restaurants and eateries.
I went on a school field trip a few years after it happened and we were able to go to the upper levels. When I went at some point in the late '90s, we were no longer able to. They told us it was because it didn't allow access to those who couldn't climb the staircases, such as those who were in wheelchairs, or other limited mobility.
I love the other headline on the paper "Unwed Father Wins Custody of Daughter." I'm old enough to remember how people saw such things in 1980.
I remember when this happened. I grew up along the Texas gulf coast, East of Houston, where salt domes are common. When the video showed the airael photo of the lake prior to the accident it was obvious it was over a salt dome. It not hard to spot the geologic features. Blessed no lives were lost that day.
I was fascinated by this incident and had never heard of this before. It is very lucky no one died after a disaster of this size happened. First time on your channel and I will be looking at more of your content.
Whenever I hear someone talk about this accident one of the first things I think of are the old school Engineering Disaster episodes of Modern Marvels.
The geology in this area of Louisiana is very interesting. The salt "domss" are actually columns of salt that extend very deep into the ground. There is actually a bed of salt thousands of feet below the surface. If you looked at a cross section of the underground, the columns of salt would look like thin pencils that reach to the surface. The salt column goes theough the varuoius layers of sediment, which allows oil and gas to rise toward the surface along the sides of the column of salt. The top of the salt column is shaped slightly like a mushroom head, so the oil and gas is trapped under the top of the dome. Drilling around salt domes is VERY common.
The dome actually pushes the aoil upward so the ground is about 150 feet above sea level. The area surrounding the domea is mostly a few feet above sea level. So these hilla are called islands. If you look at a map there are 5 or 6 islands in a relatively straight line about five miles apart. Jefferson Island, Avery Island (home of Tabasco), Weeks Island, then a few more. One is actually out in Vermillion Bay.
There are salt mines on all of the islands and a freshwater lake on top is not unusual.
There are two separate minea on Weeks Island. The old mine was sold to the Dept of Energy and it became a strategic petroleum reserve. (SPR).
It is absolutely incredible that no one lost their life.
"Delcambre" is not pronounced Del-cam-bre, it is "DEL-come". Also I was a student at USL and for a summer project we collected biological and geological samples of the lake before the accident. Our report is probably the only record of what the lake was like before the accident.
"Delcambre rhymes with "welcome"? 😳 That’s unexpected
@@spiritmatter1553 The more so for French people 🙂
BF, who are you. I am Charlie Jones, a Geology grad student under Brian Locke when it happened
Watched it on TV news
Was a Sr in HS in Lafayette when this happened…. Really really strange event.
There’s currently another active sink hole in this area. Swamp land, small, really small , towns right now are being sucked into the sinkhole. I think this one is a natural occurrence.
I live a couple of hours east of this location.
Are you referring to the Bayou Corne sinkhole? It is off Hwy. 70, east of Pierre Part. That was also a mining accident. It simply took a long time before the effects began to show.
Nice vid Dark History. Glad to hear no lives were lost in this strange occurrence.
Very informative and interesting. Thanks for sharing your video and your time
I'm claustrophobic I can barely watch these videos. I legit felt relief they all made it out. 👏
I was living in Lafayette, La. at the time, but that day I had just finished dropping materials off at a Texaco rig site in Delcambre and was returning on SR 89 that skirts the lake for several miles. It was only about a 45 minute trip, but by the time I was back in my office, the local radio and tv stations broadcasting reports about the catastrophe. It’s been almost 42 years, yet I still remember it like yesterday!
I remember hearing this on the radio and wrapping my head around what happened. I was amazed.
Great content and well presented, thanks.
Amazing how many disasters are caused by mining companies. Even more amazing how they can get away with paying a pittance to those affected and carry on business as usual. A truly sick society that values money over life.
Thanks for the description of air compressed by the flood powering the fountain. There are reports from the 12th century of a tidal fountain on the shore of the Severn Estuary, and I had long suspected a similar mechanism. Does anyone know of other examples?
WOW I'm amazed at the ability of the mine to react and operate calmly and saved all the miners. That is an amazing feat of human achievement, coordination, calm reactive responses and observation skills in a moment of crisis!
Dude, i was on the edge of my seat waiting to hear about the miners. That engineer was the man
Thank you really enjoyed your video and I learned some thing about history.❤️
5:25
I would like to add to this point. There's a city next to the frontline of Ukraine called Horlivka. It's a mining city, there are salt mines, HUGE salt mines running below all of its region. The safety record was less than stellar for decades: for example, on 2nd December 1989, a chemical spill from a secret factory dripped into the Alexandr-Zapad mine, causing 3 deaths and dozens of injuries. It was Chlorobenzene, available gas masks were useless against it, so when the miners went to recover the fallen supervisor and engineers, they were themselves poisoned. There's a movie about it, you can look it up.
The production of salt has largely stopped in 2000s, mines were sealed, and after 2014, the water pumps were shut off. Horlovka is resting on the same huge salt pillars, but with water present, nobody knows what condition they are in. The whole city might go underground one day. But it has SOME time, because it's on a high ground. The towns around it though, are also resting on salt pillars, but they are downstream, so the fear is that they would collapse first.
Omg. Whaaaaaat. How have I never heard of this?!?!?! Thank you, random internet stranger.
@@Stopthisrightnow560 The region has a lot of mines and environmental catastrophes, the Horlivka salt mines aren't even the worst of it. For example, there's "Object Cleavage", a capsule of nuclear waste that resulted from testing a nuclear mining charge. Nobody's been checking for years whether it's leaking.
The whole region is a huge coal deposit - Donbass means Donetsk [coal] Basin. It's been mined for two centuries, so there are lots of mines that are abandoned or were in process of being shut down when the war began. You can look up some of the most notable incidents on miningwiki with translation software.
Are you aware of the "Merkers" salt mine desaster at Völkershausen March 13th, 1989 in the former GDR? The pillars were slimmed down more than usual. It was probably a caculation error. A complete section (6.8km²) collapsed during a planned blasting operation. More than 80% of the 360 buildings suffered damages. On the surface some areas sank by more than a yard. The energy was calculated to equal 200 kilotons TNT. It created so large a tremor (M5.6) that in West Germany it was initially thought an earthquake had happened.
@@user-sm3xq5ob5d wow, never heard of it!
What a disaster but the highlight of this incident that had me clapping was the excellent response of the miners and their ensuing survival. Professionalism of the highest order in the face of potential death. Calmly waiting their turn for the agonizing ride to the top. I wish they had been recognized for their courage.
My dad was a coal miner. It said it was not all that unusual to punch into an old mine. The maps were not that accurate. Looks to be the same in this situation. They were all very lucky.
The old Texaco Ad. "You can trust your car to the man that wears the star" (but can you). Amazing that no one died.