A video suggestion for you to look into - the Salisbury South Australia train disaster 2002, happened very close to home and involved students from my school. www.atsb.gov.au/publications/investigation_reports/2002/rair/rair2002002
As long as you yourself got interest, I've got some time to spend watching/listening to you explaining.. anything, really. I like the format, the animation, the humour, the details and your voice/accent. Nothing happens in Denmark, so I don't know of any obscure accidents here you could do a video on.
Absolutely. I'd like to see what your thoughts are on the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion (I was very nearly in the wrong place at the wrong time for that one).
@@MyrKnof Fyrværkerifabrikken i Seest ved Kolding? Togulykken på Storebæltsbroen, hvor organiseret sjusk med kontrol af fastspænding af lastbilstrailere på såkaldte lommevogne medførte en uundgåelig ulykke, fordi kontrol ville ødelægge akkorden.
It blows my mind the way people think. The road is doing something it shouldn’t and instead of finding out why it was doing that they just patched it. Covering it up doesn’t make it go away. The pipes in LA are over a hundred years old and every once in a while a pipe will burst and flood the area.
You are looking at this the wrong way, as if it were 1 issue that existed in isolation and was ignored. The reality is that the departments that run a city have thousands of issues that pop up every day and only have the resources and people to 1) triage the issues based upon perceived immediacy of hazard to the city and its citizens, and 2) assign limited resources to address issues in the most efficient way possible. This isn't an issue of one ore more person(s) not giving a crap, its an issue of poor funding and systemic mismanagement. This is why civics educations are so critical, and another aspect where our current education paradigm falls short. People know that the Battle of Hastings was in 1066 but don't know how their own government actually works. This is how government leaders pass along culpability and actually have the gall to do things sue their own contractors for working within their management and governance culture.
I'm a highway engineer that works on utilities. Thanks for this video. This happened in 2014 so I was still in high school. You'd be shocked at how many gas, water, and sewer mains in your community are 100+ years old. I think people forget because out of sight out of mind, but the utility system is such an integral part of our infrastructure and in many places in the US it has outlived it's useful lifetime.
Considering houses are torn down and rebuild so frequently over there it almost seems like people think water and heat just appears magically from the ground.
@@HappyBeezerStudios oh they do. I have a project in construction right now that'll be in construction for the next 5 years and everyone is upset... Like you won't have water, gas, electric, cable, or internet without this 🤦🏻♀️
I am from Sydney, Australia & most residential houses are over 120 years old & counting. Builders hitting water pipes, telephone lines & electricity supplies are hit all the time virtually weekly. Surely the workers have some plans outlining these but it appears they ar either incompetent or don't care.
@@helpstopanimalabuse8153 It's not always the workers' faults. Many of these lines have been in the ground for decades. And not all of them are mapped. I've worked in several small towns where all the lines are known only by one or two old timers in Public Works. When they retire or die that knowledge goes with them. Some of these have been added to GPS systems but too many are still lurking, unlocated and waiting to cause trouble.
In answer to your side note, since US presidents generally serve for just 4-8 years, it's difficult to name an "era" after them. We in the States do have an alternate term for the late 19th century - the Gilded Age, a time of great industrial and economic progress covering up deep societal problems.
Covering up social problems??? First you need the extra food, clothes, soap, medicine etc. Consider it would take days to go from a town to a city before vehicles. Or the food grown was rarely enough, potato famine, no fertilizer, no industrial irrigation etc. Yeah they didn't give a f* about social problems they just survived. Industrialization is the greatest single event in human history.
@@dfinlen you can keep hammering on that gold leaf, buddy, but the rot present in American social systems at the time was well documented and heavily discussed by thinkers and workers alike.
45 minutes before someone got there to check out the gas leak? Wow, makes me appreciate my city more. I had to call and report gas smell in an apartment I was living in once. The company showed up super fast. Less than ten minutes. When I said "wow that was fast" the employee said they treat it just like any other emergency like a car accident or heart attack. Because literally something could explode. He detected the leak and noted where it was coming from. When the repairman from my apartment complex showed up he downplayed it and acted like I'd overreacted. I literally had paperwork from the gas company, and he tried to blame me. It was amazing.
Good looking out for yourself and others. I once caught a whif of gas at work while I was pregnant and most people couldn’t smell it but one other person. Turns out the hotel they were building right in front of my job had a gas leak and they were able to get it handled immediately after reaching the building rep. They weren’t even going to warn us 😢
Love the Goverments reaction in all of this. < Is partly to blame for the disaster < Did nothing to prevent it for over a decade < Did not acknowledge there part in it but instead put all the blame in someone Else < Disputed the offical Report < Made them pay everything < Gave most of the Money to themself, dispite there involvment ... And fuck the victims share of the money
You assume the city took all the money? That’s not how settlements work. He said the victims received a quarter that doesn’t mean the city got the rest. What about the building owners? But I do like you being angry about your own guesses
As a pipe layer myself (for farm drainage), I'd like to note a few things about the sewer pipe. Old clay/brick pipe was used for both drainage and sewer, and relies on gravity to move stuff. It's pretty sad that the city ignored a sinkhole like this, knowing what was causing it via the damaged sewer pipe. It doesn't take a very large drainage pipe to make a pretty big hole in a farm field, and these sewer lines were massive. The fact that the suck area was as small as it was is a little surprising. Even despite the faulty weld, I tend to place almost all the blame on the city for not repairing the sewer pipe. Difficult to get at and repair, yes, but even the old brick pipe could have been repaired and prevented this damage. I also tend to wonder how much the weld on the pipe was affected by sewer gases seeping upwards. They are pretty noxious, and can corrode metal, and even induce cracks (see SSC/SCC). The weld may not have been faulty at all, and the pipe just affected by the gas. Of course, I'm not going to argue with the NTSB - they have far more tools and expertise at their disposal than I do, but I do have to wonder a bit at how much worse gases like hydrogen sulfide damaged the welded joint.
All true. But I think the fatal fact in this case was the replacement of the cast gas line to HDPE. A rigid pipe can self-support to a degree and withstand much more washout before becoming an issue (like a small bridge). It's not unusual at all to see these traversing a creek unsupported. I assume once they switched to HDPE they backfilled the trench to level, but since the sewer and lateral were running deeper and parallel - as soon as the washout rematerialized the mainline HDPE would immediately sag (flexible pipe). From the diagrams it looks like the worst part of the washout was directly beneath the gas main - and if that's the case the gas lateral running into the building would still have had the support of soil around it. Without being able to sag along with the main line something had to give, and that joint is the most logical (especially if it wasn't perfect to begin with). I assume at that point the gas infiltration was actually through the buildings sanitary system as the path of least resistance. As old and complex as these systems are in larger cities - I'm surprised we don't have more of these types of instances. I've worked for one of them - and it's not unusual for these repairs to be put off as long as possible. They are very unpopular and expensive. I've seen these sewer mainlines 40' below the road surface, and the sheer complexity involved to get that deep racks up some amazing bills. Not to mention the public outcry from shutting down the road for extended periods...so they just kick the can down the road. Not saying it's right, but it is what it is...
There, not only gas explosions but also steam explosions. There is another explosion John could do, the gas explosion that took out another building, due to illegal gas hookup in a restaurant
The era from 1870-1900 is often referred to as the "Gilded Age," a term coined by Mark Twain, describing how the golden veneer of industrial wealth hid mass poverty and social problems underneath.
I remember being in school when this happened. I was only 6 blocks away, though I don't recall hearing anything to indicate an explosion. I was excited to see that you covered this though as the news channels only covered the incident as it was happening live, but no statement about how it was caused, which is what I was really interested in. Didn't even know about road sagging into the road being a problem. I know some New Yorkers from Manhattan call ConEdison ConEd for short. Also didn't know that the con was short for Consolidated. I learned alot about from this video.
That's one of my pet hates. News covers things like this, but never follows up on the root cause. We have a few serious car accidents on the same section of road a few years back and it was all over the news. I searched the internet about a year later to find the causes, nothing. 😡
As to your question around 1:50 I’d say we call the Victorian period the Gilded Age here. It was the beginning of the US being nearly fully industrialised, and we had just gotten our first round of wealthy industrialists so rich they could challenge the government. The period ended with Teddy Roosevelt’s trust-busting and breaking up of monopolies. The new theatres and train stations were very ornate like the gold on gilded items, but underneath the veneer was a slew of workers rights issues, poor pay and inequality. Great video as always! I live less than an hour outside of Manhattan and I honestly don’t remember this incident very well so I’m glad I saw this.
@@RocLobo358 Well that's just it. In the US we usually only use "Victorian" if we're talking about Europe from that era (especially Britain), or when referencing the clothing or architecture styles reminiscent of Victorian England. "Victorian New York" as said in the video sounds awkward, but "Victorian building in New York" sounds fine.
An interesting side detail: I got curious and looked on Google Street View, and the 1644/1646 Park Avenue lots are still vacant eight years later. That's pretty unusual for Manhattan, where real estate is usually too valuable to leave vacant for long. (It's also slightly wild how completely intact 1642 and 1648 are, even in the most recent shot after the disaster. It's like someone just came along and pulled those two buildings out like teeth.)
Oh boy... Yeah, property values in New York are high because investors keep pumping investment dollars into the _steadily rising property values_ without concern for whether the values are _real_ or _not..._ The NYC property market is a bubble waiting to burst. There are lease and rental units that have gone vacant for over a decade. Far too often, locations that _do_ get rented or leased to businesses end up vacant after several months or maybe a year or two at best, cause it's not possible to make enough money to pay the rent. I genuinely worry what fallout will result from this once investors realize it's a strained bubble, and start trying to pull out before the bubble pops... inevitably popping the bubble...
@@richfiles While NYC has a particularly bad case of the problem, it is far from unusual to have property speculators distort the price of housing, and I have seen the same thing happen personally in both London* and in a small town in rural NC. In both cases the problems resolved themselves without a catastrophic collapse, though in London I think the problem was defused by changes in taxation and property ownership that made owning rental properties less advantageous. * I bought a house in London when the market was rising so fast that in the six weeks after my offer was accepted that I could not have afforded the "market price" on the day the sale closed/ completed. My career did well, and my income more than doubled in the following 5 years, but _at no point_ during the time I owned it could I have afforded to buy it at market price, including the price I finally sold it for five years after I bought it.
@@pulaski1 until it gets completely gentrified lmao. That’s also happening here. Those lots won’t be vacant forever lmao. Also nobody wants to build a building there if the sewer and everything is still screwed up.
As someone who lived 20 feet away from those buildings, that day sure was something. I remember me and my dad sneaking back into the zone after the explosion and being the only ones in our building. Trying to sleep with the NTSB having flood lights everywhere was a pain to sleep with while in high school
@@TimPerfetto Hello fellow long haired dude! Do other guys with long hair nod at you in public when you see each other? It happens every time I see another dude with long hair. It's like we're all in a secret club. I think it's pretty cool when I get the nod lol. *Nods in your general direction*
@@darksu6947 I can see a secret long hair man club existing. People that drive jeeps are all in a secret club. Motorcycles too. I wonder how many secret clubs there are that I don't know about? I bet little people are all in a secret club if they run into each other. Albino people I bet have a secret club. Probably any handicap like blind or deaf or missing limbs are in a secret nod club when they meet someone with the same handicap. I am sorry to say that I do not belong to any secret fraternities. I am a sailor and we don't wave to each other or anything. People on bicycles aren't in a secret club. I feel as though I may be missing out. Maybe I've been on this boat too long.
I lived in the city when this happened. Building collapses and gas explosions aren't as uncommon as they should be around here, given the age and state of repair of many buildings especially in Harlem and elsewhere in northern Manhattan.
One advantage NYC has is the low seismic activity. In other urban areas with more newer gas systems, earthquakes have made these explosions more frequent. Regards.
I'd been in that building 1646 dozens of times. I had a picture that my wife had gotten from her grandmother that was lost there. Occasionally my wife asks me where it is. I always change the subject. I love this channel and I've watched it for some time now. I know about that building, some of the victims and the former owner personally. The basement walls at 1646 I think it was were flagstone near the street and it always had a gassy smell of a sort. When the building went up^ it wasn't a big surprise. I think the utility had been called there once or twice in days before the explosion. They said at the time it was the largest explosion in NY since 9/11. The blast was heard as far away as Conn. and New Jersey. The former owner died years later. He was a beautiful intense old German man. I loved him. A lot of people did.
We usually do use the term "Victorian period" here in the US. Someone else mentioned "Reconstruction" but I think people would normally only use that for political things. For example, I've never heard someone say a "Reconstruction house" but "Victorian house" would be a very common thing to say.
Reconstruction was only in the American South from 1865 to 1876 And was the period in which the Former Confederate States were subjugated and occupied militarily After the Civil War and is the main cause of many of our issues today
Victorian house is an architectural style that continued to be used long after the Victorian age. Historians call the period of American history from 1876 to 1914 the "Gilded Age."
@@vanguard9067 As much as I dislike Abraham Lincoln I feel that he would have been better for the American South after the War than the radicals in Congres. They were out for blood.
Hehehe.....ROFLMFAU......the sewer animation with the turds was pure gold 😄Top job John and great content as usual......I also like the ending where you give us a weather report for London 😎 Best wishes from Melbourne, Australia 🐨🦘🍻🏖🌏
The empty space is a sad reminder of people’s negligence. (I avoid walking over there) I remember when it first happened, everyone pretty much knew that it was something negligent. Most buildings in the Harlem area aren’t properly taken care of.
Read the 1890 to 1930 archived New York Times paper and surprisingly gas fires and explosions recurring and common events mainly do to un-orderized gas and poor construction materials. After the New London, Texas, school explosion in the 1930's mercaptan was required to be added to all natural gas in the US. The Germans oderized gas in the 1880s. Apparently sometimes we still don't take it seriously. Excellent video again. Thanks
Reconstruction would be accurate if we were talking about a Southern city, but since it's NYC I would say: "Gilded Age" for the period between the Civil War and turn of the 20th Century.
John, I think the role of the Park Avenue Viaduct (Metro North tracks) played in all of this was downplayed or ignored by the NTSB investigation. The tracks have a support column right in front of these properties, so all the utilities involved were undoubtedly exposed to the daily vibrations of hundreds of train movements. The viaduct dates to the mid 1870s and the construction of the original Grand Central Depot (the 2nd was GC Station, and the 3rd is Grand Central Terminal).
BTW, the late 1800s in the US can either be called the Victorian Era (we can usually get a timeframe from that) or the Gilded Age. Since you said Grant, that could've also been during Reconstruction. It's a little fuzzy at that specific point.
I would have never thought you'd cover this! I was living about 2 miles away and still in highschool at the time. I remember playing battlefield on my computer and feeling an explosion that felt a little more real than just a game. Then I heard the sirens a few minutes later. Saw it on the news later that same night. Really made me wonder which building would be next to go 🙃
You should cover the twin east Boston overpressure explosions. One was in East Boston on September 2, 1983, and the other in Merrimack Valley on September 13, 2018. The overpressured gas lines caused dozens of explosions and house fires. The first accident was caused by a failed pressure regulator and the second was due to the workers accidentally not switching the pressure sensor over to the new pipe causing the sensor to read pressure from the unused pipe and opening the regulator full.
I have a video clip of the state police driving around saying evacuate all buildings and houses. It was other worldly! I think you should totally do the overpressurization! It was wild!
I used to live in the valley. It was an amazing explosion. What isn't shown: Lawrence is a terrible city. Some parts are better than others, but N. Broadway is Fentanyl central. Junkboxes all over the goddamn road.
I'm just posting a comment to help the channel get visibility via the TH-cam algorithm. The dedicated and accurate research and consistent effort put into every video needs no comment. We'll get you over one million subscribers John.
I love when people see several men sitting and watching 2 men work but in reality it’s several me with a different job and task . You have men that dig , mechanics that put the pipe together, Forman , inspector ect. Plus they all can’t be in the hole at the same time
It’s called working for a Union. Everyone has their specific jobs. No one is allowed to cross “department” lines, even if their help would benefit the job.
@@thetman0068 It is. Forced unions in modern society cause all sorts of inefficiency. There's nothing wrong with employees voluntarily bargaining collectively, or voluntarily joining a union to have them be an intercessor for them with their employer, but when people are mandated or coerced by the state to join, then the problems occur. At that point the union becomes an unnecessary middle man that simply extorts money from the employees. Most public sector jobs in America are unionized, which makes little sense, since they already have special protections from the government, and New York state isn't right-to-work, so employees in the private sector can be forced to join a union.
First off how many of you all have ever worked in the trades ? And without UNIONS, we would all be working for piss poor pay . And UNIONS don't discriminate by race, color, or sex . Everyone doing the same job gets EQUAL PAY . I'm enjoying my two UNION pension checks every month from my UNION job .
Loved the video John! I always find myself looking forward to hearing how your corner of Southern London is going at the end of the video. I had an idea for a video, large scale blackouts. The US has seen a couple of those in the last few decades, some taking many days for the grid to come back online
I love the use of that sound effect from 90's era VHS tapes 📼 PSA announcements/etc. At the transition points in the video. It gives it great ominous safety measures vibes
Thanks for observing that. I hadn't gotten the reference to 1990's (VHS) as wittily echoing 1890's. ....An old term for the Gilded Age you don't hear any more is: "The Gay Nineties." Besides the obvious shift in what "Gay" means, the "90's" doesn't mean 1890's anymore.
Excellent video, as usual. I only vaguely recall the incident, it didn't get a lot of coverage out here in California and I didn't catch the followup investigations. A 45 minute wait time to investigate a gas leak seems crazy. I've reported the smell of gas once in Chicago (Commonwealth Edison) and twice in Monterey County, California (Pacific Gas and Electric). On all three occasions I was instructed to evacuate everyone, turn nothing electrical on or off, and to extinguish any open flames. Each time a technician arrived with a sniffer within 10 minutes or less, very impressive. My CA calls also got a Fire Department response, and both times the PG&E tech arrived first, they were that quick. PG&E has a terrible safety reputation for maintenance but they do respond very quickly and effectively to customer safety calls. Speaking of which, John, the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion might make for a good video. The cause was negligence, corruption, and misdirected funds, it cost eight people their lives, and it leveled the neighborhood. I was very nearby when it happened and had just shopped at a grocery store right across the street from ground zero. The explosion was tremendous, it rattled my pickup enough that I almost lost control. It was behind me, and I seriously thought that a passenger plane had crashed given how loud it was and seeing an enormous pall of smoke rising so quickly (flights departing San Francisco International almost immediately pass over San Bruno).
@@anthonykukla5384 Thank you. I was pretty shaken up when it happened, even moreso when I passed through the area a few days later. Some of the debris had landed in the parking lot I'd just left, damaging a few cars. The store had to close that day due to billowing clouds of toxic smoke. I can't imagine what it must have been like for residents of the subdivision. It was a huge gas main that supplied many communities on the SF Peninsula. It took a while to shut it down, like the San Bernardino train wreck and fire in '89.
Building blew debris onto the Metro North mainline. Trains had a 30mph restriction in the area afterwards . Love that you’ve been doing these videos based on NTSB reports . Pretty cool.
Hey John keep up the great work! Just thought Id drop in to say I love the new rating system. The fact we have a more refined system as well as the legacy scale I think really helps better categorize the severity of the disasters. Needless to say id like to see it continue. Thanks!
I would say the fault was purely the fault of the city and its non-maintenance of the sewer. Even it the T-Joint was good and not faulty the broken sewer would continue to was away the soil around it eventualy leading to a situation that would crack even an up to spec T-joint in the gas line. So the result would be roughly the same it would have just taken longer to occur.
The animation of the sewer system in 1873 is spot on. The brown logs had me rolling. Don't know why. Love your content though, very informative, thank you Sir.
Would love to see a video of the Andover, MA gas explosions. Several cities caught fire a few years ago, and there hasn't been much media coverage since the incident. Love your videos!
Considering the population density of the area, it's surprising that only 8 people died. It probably has with the time of day. 9:30am most people are already at work. Had this happened at 6:30am the death toll probably would have been much higher.
Reconstruction is a term only used to describe the Southern (Conferderate) States. Ya'll up North had minimal damage (comparatively) to the Southern States. The South has never truly recovered.
@@yvettenoland5500Reconstruction is absolutely the right term for the time period of the late 19th century. It has meaning beyond the actual act of building. Clearly you haven’t recovered, your comment is a beautiful blend of ignorance and grievance. Maybe don’t try to own people and you won’t get wrecked?
@@Matt-xc6sp Thanks for letting me know that the term has been used for other times/places! My ignorance definitely is showing! I will seek to further my education. Your reply is a great example of how limited knowledge can be and I definitely appreciate the schooling!! There is always more to learn. I was thinking way too locally, wasn't I?!
I remember watching this at Work… I had just went on break and saw it in the News here in California RIP to the Victims… I do hope you cover the second New York explosion a year or two later! The East Village Explosion!
I remember not long after this happened going into the city with my brother - don't remember why, looking to see the rubble where this building was as my train passed, and being dumbfounded. One thing to see the devestation in the news, totally another to see it in person.
Recently half of the city I work in was dug up to replace old water and sewage lines, which around 100 years ago were put in with copper and cast iron lines. Needless to say, they corrode and need to regularly be replaced and upgraded.
I wish my city would do that. Instead, they just replace them in five foot sections as they fail. You'd figure at some point it would be more cost effective to replace the entire water line rather than replacing it piece by piece, but whatever.
@@handles_are_dumb_01 Are you willing for your city to raise your taxes to start digging up streets and replacing them in big chunks? Because it cost money
@@neilkurzman4907 Yeah, that's the hard question. Overall, it's going to cost more to replace it a piece at a time, but getting people to accept such a large amount at once would be quite difficult. But there is some absurdity in what they're doing now. They just repaved the main street a few years ago... And then shortly after ripped up big sections as water lines broke. Seems incredibly stupid to not have replaced those lines in their entirely when the road was replaced. Now we have a three year old road that is bumpy as hell because the patches after pipe replacements aren't exactly don't correctly.
I would place 99% of the blame on the sewer line being ignored for years. The gas line T-junction would have failed no matter how good it was when the ground was washed away allowing main to sag.
this happened in my city (Seattle) in the neighborhood of Greenwood in 2016. a natural gas explosion blew up a city block when someone left a pilot light on inside of the Gyro spot. luckily it was around 2am. I live about 4 or 5 blocks away and it still rumbled my entire apartment and knocked stuff off the walls. i thought a tree had fallen or something. i was streaming The Division with my buddy and in the playback you could hear the explosion in the background. it was so loud it distorted my mic audio.
Love your videos John. And how you tell us about the weather in your part of S London. Freezing with snow on the ground and overcast here in Eastern Washington State, US.
No algorithm brought me here. I was bored and curious. As a life long New Yorker I remember this incident. You just know it’s bad here when a Brit is able to point out the audacious way this city does things. Gotta love this channel! I subscribed. 💯😎
If you're going to refer to a period of American history based on who's president at the time, the preferred terminology is typically administration like "the Grant Administration" or "the Bush Administration"
You should do a video on the danish fireworks disaster at Seest in 2004. 760 homes (2000 people) evacuated and a blast that ended at 2,2 at the richter scale.
If it's not completely broke and as long as it's still working atleast partly, we won't worry about it until it fails completely, then we will fix it. Americas infrastructure modo for sure. America's government is too concerned with giving all the people's tax money thats supposed to go to fixing infrastructure to other countries for things like gender studies or paying for their wars.
Laziness is always sad to see. Especially when it causes this kind of damage. "The road is sagging, should we do something about it? Nah, let's just patch it and call it a day."
Victorian would be correct, though it would be more specific to refer to it as the "Gilded Age". The Victorian era in the US is generally subdivided between the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Gilded Age.
I enjoy learning and watching these videos, so imagine my surprise to find this one! A disaster in my area!!!! I used to ride the MN train for yeaaarrssss and I couldn't recall this at all...until I continued watching and some parts started to sound familiar. Thank you for this. I did not know a lot about what really happened. My heart goes out to those families who are STILL mourning their loved ones.
Just sayin' on behalf of all Aussies thank you for your well timed upload ❤️ All of us returning from the pubs with a new vid to fall asleep to; then rematch in the morning. Cheers mate! Blinky, on behalf of of all 3/4 pissed Aussies ✌️
I was FDNY from 1980-2003. We responded to these events every so often, but this video is especially galling. Everyone who passed the buck should have been jailed for life. Those services are vital for the city to function, and must be maintained for safety. Since a few callous swine allowed this known issue to get worse, life in prison is the only remedy.
The quality of plainly difficult videos are so good as a content creator myself on another channel i know how “plainly difficult” it can be to create videos ❤️ love it
Great work as usual John! One thing I would want you cover better in your videos is the aftermath. For me at least it was a bit unclear who paid who and why? And were there some actual consequence for the negligence the city showed? Did the survivors get new apartments? etc etc
Un-official FDNY response: 0930 E58/L26 transmit the verbal for a loud boom. L26 arrives a few minutes later and transmits a 10-60 (major emergency (box alarm with numerous special units added.) Within an hour, the 5th alarm had been struck.
I worked on gas for 25years & we spent most of that time getting rid of old low pressure lines .We also replaced cast iron with steel & plastic.Gas takes time to accumulate before it can explode.Thats what happened here
I have been watching a slow collapse in a Walgreens driveway that has been patched twice now. It is around 30cm across and last seen at around 4cm deep in the center. As to Explosions look up the Port Chicago Blast in WW II. My dad slept through it further south down the bay. He was woken up to find he and his mattress on the floor. He then had to do accountability checks for his small unit in which he was the second senior NCO.
Off topic ish, but am I the only one who finds the name "Consolidated Edison" just hit weirdly? As in mental images of a discombobulated Thomas Edison being recombobulated into some sculpture version of a Picasso.... maybe I'm just weird when I am utterly sleep deprived. 😂😂
I'm just clicking on the video & haven't watched it yet, but can I just say that the short intro music clip is probably the most dramatic music I've heard. I LOVE it!!! Great choice!
I live in an ex-coal mining high risk area and despite the problems of mining subsidence, mine gas and the high risk of ground fires authorities still see fit to allow housing and even railway stations to be built on it. Lessons will never be learned until those managing businesses are held accountable for that companies failings.
The entire country is using monopolies to contract their infrastructure and wondering why their power grid is always failing and why no one shows up when they report overgrown powerlines.
Want to see more explosions let me know 👇
Here’s this weeks outro video in full: th-cam.com/video/mkMKYm4Y0uo/w-d-xo.html
A video suggestion for you to look into - the Salisbury South Australia train disaster 2002, happened very close to home and involved students from my school.
www.atsb.gov.au/publications/investigation_reports/2002/rair/rair2002002
As long as you yourself got interest, I've got some time to spend watching/listening to you explaining.. anything, really. I like the format, the animation, the humour, the details and your voice/accent.
Nothing happens in Denmark, so I don't know of any obscure accidents here you could do a video on.
Absolutely. I'd like to see what your thoughts are on the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion (I was very nearly in the wrong place at the wrong time for that one).
@@MyrKnof Fyrværkerifabrikken i Seest ved Kolding? Togulykken på Storebæltsbroen, hvor organiseret sjusk med kontrol af fastspænding af lastbilstrailere på såkaldte lommevogne medførte en uundgåelig ulykke, fordi kontrol ville ødelægge akkorden.
2007 midtown steam pipe explosion you need to a video on that
It blows my mind the way people think. The road is doing something it shouldn’t and instead of finding out why it was doing that they just patched it. Covering it up doesn’t make it go away. The pipes in LA are over a hundred years old and every once in a while a pipe will burst and flood the area.
You are looking at this the wrong way, as if it were 1 issue that existed in isolation and was ignored. The reality is that the departments that run a city have thousands of issues that pop up every day and only have the resources and people to 1) triage the issues based upon perceived immediacy of hazard to the city and its citizens, and 2) assign limited resources to address issues in the most efficient way possible. This isn't an issue of one ore more person(s) not giving a crap, its an issue of poor funding and systemic mismanagement.
This is why civics educations are so critical, and another aspect where our current education paradigm falls short. People know that the Battle of Hastings was in 1066 but don't know how their own government actually works. This is how government leaders pass along culpability and actually have the gall to do things sue their own contractors for working within their management and governance culture.
They like money and hate people.
When the rats run away from something, follow.
The power of procrastination.
Lol what the hell does las waterlines have to do with anything?
I'm a highway engineer that works on utilities. Thanks for this video.
This happened in 2014 so I was still in high school. You'd be shocked at how many gas, water, and sewer mains in your community are 100+ years old. I think people forget because out of sight out of mind, but the utility system is such an integral part of our infrastructure and in many places in the US it has outlived it's useful lifetime.
Considering houses are torn down and rebuild so frequently over there it almost seems like people think water and heat just appears magically from the ground.
its crazy how many explosions with gas lines seem to happen in March..
@@HappyBeezerStudios oh they do. I have a project in construction right now that'll be in construction for the next 5 years and everyone is upset... Like you won't have water, gas, electric, cable, or internet without this 🤦🏻♀️
I am from Sydney, Australia & most residential houses are over 120 years old & counting. Builders hitting water pipes, telephone lines & electricity supplies are hit all the time virtually weekly. Surely the workers have some plans outlining these but it appears they ar either incompetent or don't care.
@@helpstopanimalabuse8153 It's not always the workers' faults. Many of these lines have been in the ground for decades. And not all of them are mapped. I've worked in several small towns where all the lines are known only by one or two old timers in Public Works. When they retire or die that knowledge goes with them. Some of these have been added to GPS systems but too many are still lurking, unlocated and waiting to cause trouble.
In answer to your side note, since US presidents generally serve for just 4-8 years, it's difficult to name an "era" after them. We in the States do have an alternate term for the late 19th century - the Gilded Age, a time of great industrial and economic progress covering up deep societal problems.
I often heard it referred to as the Industrial Age\Revolution.
Like now.
Covering up social problems??? First you need the extra food, clothes, soap, medicine etc. Consider it would take days to go from a town to a city before vehicles. Or the food grown was rarely enough, potato famine, no fertilizer, no industrial irrigation etc. Yeah they didn't give a f* about social problems they just survived.
Industrialization is the greatest single event in human history.
@@dfinlen I respectfully challenge you to ponder your last sentence. Regards.
@@dfinlen you can keep hammering on that gold leaf, buddy, but the rot present in American social systems at the time was well documented and heavily discussed by thinkers and workers alike.
45 minutes before someone got there to check out the gas leak? Wow, makes me appreciate my city more. I had to call and report gas smell in an apartment I was living in once. The company showed up super fast. Less than ten minutes. When I said "wow that was fast" the employee said they treat it just like any other emergency like a car accident or heart attack. Because literally something could explode.
He detected the leak and noted where it was coming from. When the repairman from my apartment complex showed up he downplayed it and acted like I'd overreacted. I literally had paperwork from the gas company, and he tried to blame me. It was amazing.
Good looking out for yourself and others. I once caught a whif of gas at work while I was pregnant and most people couldn’t smell it but one other person. Turns out the hotel they were building right in front of my job had a gas leak and they were able to get it handled immediately after reaching the building rep. They weren’t even going to warn us 😢
Love the Goverments reaction in all of this.
< Is partly to blame for the disaster
< Did nothing to prevent it for over a decade
< Did not acknowledge there part in it but instead put all the blame in someone Else
< Disputed the offical Report
< Made them pay everything
< Gave most of the Money to themself, dispite there involvment ... And fuck the victims share of the money
Probably awarded themself a Medal too
The disaster was a net positive to the city even though they're also responsible for the disaster.
'Murica
You assume the city took all the money? That’s not how settlements work. He said the victims received a quarter that doesn’t mean the city got the rest. What about the building owners?
But I do like you being angry about your own guesses
@@neilkurzman4907 Always good to know I Entertain! ^^
Hope to See you in some other Comment Sections too friend.
@@neilkurzman4907They shouldn't get anything
As a pipe layer myself (for farm drainage), I'd like to note a few things about the sewer pipe. Old clay/brick pipe was used for both drainage and sewer, and relies on gravity to move stuff. It's pretty sad that the city ignored a sinkhole like this, knowing what was causing it via the damaged sewer pipe. It doesn't take a very large drainage pipe to make a pretty big hole in a farm field, and these sewer lines were massive. The fact that the suck area was as small as it was is a little surprising. Even despite the faulty weld, I tend to place almost all the blame on the city for not repairing the sewer pipe. Difficult to get at and repair, yes, but even the old brick pipe could have been repaired and prevented this damage. I also tend to wonder how much the weld on the pipe was affected by sewer gases seeping upwards. They are pretty noxious, and can corrode metal, and even induce cracks (see SSC/SCC). The weld may not have been faulty at all, and the pipe just affected by the gas. Of course, I'm not going to argue with the NTSB - they have far more tools and expertise at their disposal than I do, but I do have to wonder a bit at how much worse gases like hydrogen sulfide damaged the welded joint.
All true. But I think the fatal fact in this case was the replacement of the cast gas line to HDPE. A rigid pipe can self-support to a degree and withstand much more washout before becoming an issue (like a small bridge). It's not unusual at all to see these traversing a creek unsupported. I assume once they switched to HDPE they backfilled the trench to level, but since the sewer and lateral were running deeper and parallel - as soon as the washout rematerialized the mainline HDPE would immediately sag (flexible pipe). From the diagrams it looks like the worst part of the washout was directly beneath the gas main - and if that's the case the gas lateral running into the building would still have had the support of soil around it. Without being able to sag along with the main line something had to give, and that joint is the most logical (especially if it wasn't perfect to begin with). I assume at that point the gas infiltration was actually through the buildings sanitary system as the path of least resistance.
As old and complex as these systems are in larger cities - I'm surprised we don't have more of these types of instances. I've worked for one of them - and it's not unusual for these repairs to be put off as long as possible. They are very unpopular and expensive. I've seen these sewer mainlines 40' below the road surface, and the sheer complexity involved to get that deep racks up some amazing bills. Not to mention the public outcry from shutting down the road for extended periods...so they just kick the can down the road. Not saying it's right, but it is what it is...
The maze of utilities in conjunction with the age its amazing there's not more incidents. Great job researching and editing P.D.
Thank you
It's cheaper for NY to pay out than to maintain.
Life ain't that expensive in America.
There, not only gas explosions but also steam explosions. There is another explosion John could do, the gas explosion that took out another building, due to illegal gas hookup in a restaurant
The era from 1870-1900 is often referred to as the "Gilded Age," a term coined by Mark Twain, describing how the golden veneer of industrial wealth hid mass poverty and social problems underneath.
Yeah, I'm american, and generally, time periods aren't indicated by presidents, because they don't rule for anywhere near as long as royals.
I remember being in school when this happened. I was only 6 blocks away, though I don't recall hearing anything to indicate an explosion. I was excited to see that you covered this though as the news channels only covered the incident as it was happening live, but no statement about how it was caused, which is what I was really interested in. Didn't even know about road sagging into the road being a problem. I know some New Yorkers from Manhattan call ConEdison ConEd for short. Also didn't know that the con was short for Consolidated. I learned alot about from this video.
That's one of my pet hates. News covers things like this, but never follows up on the root cause.
We have a few serious car accidents on the same section of road a few years back and it was all over the news. I searched the internet about a year later to find the causes, nothing. 😡
The 'Con' doesn't need to be short for anything to be descriptive of any vile monopoly.
You clearly dont live anywhere. Nobody lives there it is fake. I live there I should know.
In UK, the gas mains have been replaced with ultrasonic welded PEx. However water mains are still leaking 20% of our water.
Man the whole time I was watching I just wanted to correct em and say "We call em ConEd. You don't have to say the full name 😭"
It's amazing that there were only 8 fatalities.
I guess most of the people were at work and the Church was empty
Yes fortunately it was during work/school hours and before the massive WFH / remote classes push
As to your question around 1:50 I’d say we call the Victorian period the Gilded Age here. It was the beginning of the US being nearly fully industrialised, and we had just gotten our first round of wealthy industrialists so rich they could challenge the government. The period ended with Teddy Roosevelt’s trust-busting and breaking up of monopolies. The new theatres and train stations were very ornate like the gold on gilded items, but underneath the veneer was a slew of workers rights issues, poor pay and inequality. Great video as always! I live less than an hour outside of Manhattan and I honestly don’t remember this incident very well so I’m glad I saw this.
Yeah ... perfect reply ... thanks Maverick ...
We also say "After the civil war" or "The Reconstruction" if we are talking about Grant .
You can also just say victorian
@@RocLobo358 Well that's just it. In the US we usually only use "Victorian" if we're talking about Europe from that era (especially Britain), or when referencing the clothing or architecture styles reminiscent of Victorian England. "Victorian New York" as said in the video sounds awkward, but "Victorian building in New York" sounds fine.
An interesting side detail: I got curious and looked on Google Street View, and the 1644/1646 Park Avenue lots are still vacant eight years later. That's pretty unusual for Manhattan, where real estate is usually too valuable to leave vacant for long. (It's also slightly wild how completely intact 1642 and 1648 are, even in the most recent shot after the disaster. It's like someone just came along and pulled those two buildings out like teeth.)
That’s Harlem. There’s still a few vacant lots around
Oh boy... Yeah, property values in New York are high because investors keep pumping investment dollars into the _steadily rising property values_ without concern for whether the values are _real_ or _not..._ The NYC property market is a bubble waiting to burst. There are lease and rental units that have gone vacant for over a decade. Far too often, locations that _do_ get rented or leased to businesses end up vacant after several months or maybe a year or two at best, cause it's not possible to make enough money to pay the rent. I genuinely worry what fallout will result from this once investors realize it's a strained bubble, and start trying to pull out before the bubble pops... inevitably popping the bubble...
The lots were probably tied up for several years in the litigation before redevelopment or sale could even be considered.
@@richfiles While NYC has a particularly bad case of the problem, it is far from unusual to have property speculators distort the price of housing, and I have seen the same thing happen personally in both London* and in a small town in rural NC. In both cases the problems resolved themselves without a catastrophic collapse, though in London I think the problem was defused by changes in taxation and property ownership that made owning rental properties less advantageous.
* I bought a house in London when the market was rising so fast that in the six weeks after my offer was accepted that I could not have afforded the "market price" on the day the sale closed/ completed. My career did well, and my income more than doubled in the following 5 years, but _at no point_ during the time I owned it could I have afforded to buy it at market price, including the price I finally sold it for five years after I bought it.
@@pulaski1 until it gets completely gentrified lmao. That’s also happening here. Those lots won’t be vacant forever lmao. Also nobody wants to build a building there if the sewer and everything is still screwed up.
As someone who lived 20 feet away from those buildings, that day sure was something.
I remember me and my dad sneaking back into the zone after the explosion and being the only ones in our building. Trying to sleep with the NTSB having flood lights everywhere was a pain to sleep with while in high school
You should have just covered your eyes and plugged your ears with your hair. Thats what I do
@@TimPerfetto Hello fellow long haired dude! Do other guys with long hair nod at you in public when you see each other? It happens every time I see another dude with long hair. It's like we're all in a secret club. I think it's pretty cool when I get the nod lol. *Nods in your general direction*
@@darksu6947 I can see a secret long hair man club existing. People that drive jeeps are all in a secret club. Motorcycles too. I wonder how many secret clubs there are that I don't know about? I bet little people are all in a secret club if they run into each other. Albino people I bet have a secret club. Probably any handicap like blind or deaf or missing limbs are in a secret nod club when they meet someone with the same handicap. I am sorry to say that I do not belong to any secret fraternities. I am a sailor and we don't wave to each other or anything. People on bicycles aren't in a secret club. I feel as though I may be missing out. Maybe I've been on this boat too long.
@@slob0516whoah lol
Weren’t you worried about any additional explosions?
I lived in the city when this happened. Building collapses and gas explosions aren't as uncommon as they should be around here, given the age and state of repair of many buildings especially in Harlem and elsewhere in northern Manhattan.
One advantage NYC has is the low seismic activity.
In other urban areas with more newer gas systems, earthquakes have made these explosions more frequent.
Regards.
I'd been in that building 1646 dozens of times. I had a picture that my wife had gotten from her grandmother that was lost there. Occasionally my wife asks me where it is. I always change the subject. I love this channel and I've watched it for some time now. I know about that building, some of the victims and the former owner personally. The basement walls at 1646 I think it was were flagstone near the street and it always had a gassy smell of a sort. When the building went up^ it wasn't a big surprise. I think the utility had been called there once or twice in days before the explosion. They said at the time it was the largest explosion in NY since 9/11. The blast was heard as far away as Conn. and New Jersey. The former owner died years later. He was a beautiful intense old German man. I loved him. A lot of people did.
A recurrent theme in disasters is that there are always warning signs. The signs go ignored and tragedy strikes.
Life likes to warn us,
but we know better!
Or, those in charge decide to accept the risk and settle.
The sewer logs were epic.
I was about to comment the same thing. Hilarious.
I think I saw a peanut in there somewhere
Frogger, Poop Edition
We usually do use the term "Victorian period" here in the US. Someone else mentioned "Reconstruction" but I think people would normally only use that for political things. For example, I've never heard someone say a "Reconstruction house" but "Victorian house" would be a very common thing to say.
Reconstruction was only in the American South from 1865 to 1876 And was the period in which the Former Confederate States were subjugated and occupied militarily After the Civil War and is the main cause of many of our issues today
@@1TruNub The characteristics of Reconstruction, but more the abdication of the goals of it that really undercut it success.
Technically it’s called the Gilded Age, but I’ve heard Victorian, too.
Victorian house is an architectural style that continued to be used long after the Victorian age.
Historians call the period of American history from 1876 to 1914 the "Gilded Age."
@@vanguard9067 As much as I dislike Abraham Lincoln I feel that he would have been better for the American South after the War than the radicals in Congres. They were out for blood.
Hehehe.....ROFLMFAU......the sewer animation with the turds was pure gold 😄Top job John and great content as usual......I also like the ending where you give us a weather report for London 😎
Best wishes from Melbourne, Australia 🐨🦘🍻🏖🌏
Thank you!!
I got a special kick out of that too! Gold star material in otherwise grim story.. Greetings from slightly snowy Helsinki, Finland :)
I look forward to every video for the one or two moments of comedic irreverence tucked within. Nicely done, John.
The 'logs' that managed not to become stuck in the bowl!
The empty space is a sad reminder of people’s negligence. (I avoid walking over there) I remember when it first happened, everyone pretty much knew that it was something negligent. Most buildings in the Harlem area aren’t properly taken care of.
Read the 1890 to 1930 archived New York Times paper and surprisingly gas fires and explosions recurring and common events mainly do to un-orderized gas and poor construction materials. After the New London, Texas, school explosion in the 1930's mercaptan was required to be added to all natural gas in the US. The Germans oderized gas in the 1880s.
Apparently sometimes we still don't take it seriously. Excellent video again. Thanks
So Ross was right all along?
that was the Reconstruction era after the Civil War 1866 to 1880 love your videos John have always been a history buff myself
Reconstruction would be accurate if we were talking about a Southern city, but since it's NYC I would say: "Gilded Age" for the period between the Civil War and turn of the 20th Century.
Don't recall a certain Gen. Lee marching through NYC in this time frame and wracking havoc ...
John, I think the role of the Park Avenue Viaduct (Metro North tracks) played in all of this was downplayed or ignored by the NTSB investigation. The tracks have a support column right in front of these properties, so all the utilities involved were undoubtedly exposed to the daily vibrations of hundreds of train movements. The viaduct dates to the mid 1870s and the construction of the original Grand Central Depot (the 2nd was GC Station, and the 3rd is Grand Central Terminal).
BTW, the late 1800s in the US can either be called the Victorian Era (we can usually get a timeframe from that) or the Gilded Age. Since you said Grant, that could've also been during Reconstruction. It's a little fuzzy at that specific point.
The Fuzzy Age! The Out-of-Focus Age?
I would have never thought you'd cover this! I was living about 2 miles away and still in highschool at the time. I remember playing battlefield on my computer and feeling an explosion that felt a little more real than just a game. Then I heard the sirens a few minutes later. Saw it on the news later that same night. Really made me wonder which building would be next to go 🙃
"If you believe that, you're watching the wrong youtube channel"
Love it. 👏👏👏👏
Thank you
@@PlainlyDifficult you're very welcome 😊
You should cover the twin east Boston overpressure explosions. One was in East Boston on September 2, 1983, and the other in Merrimack Valley on September 13, 2018. The overpressured gas lines caused dozens of explosions and house fires. The first accident was caused by a failed pressure regulator and the second was due to the workers accidentally not switching the pressure sensor over to the new pipe causing the sensor to read pressure from the unused pipe and opening the regulator full.
I have a video clip of the state police driving around saying evacuate all buildings and houses. It was other worldly! I think you should totally do the overpressurization! It was wild!
I used to live in the valley. It was an amazing explosion. What isn't shown: Lawrence is a terrible city. Some parts are better than others, but N. Broadway is Fentanyl central. Junkboxes all over the goddamn road.
I'm just posting a comment to help the channel get visibility via the TH-cam algorithm. The dedicated and accurate research and consistent effort put into every video needs no comment. We'll get you over one million subscribers John.
Thank you for your help
Username checks out ^_^
Having lived in NYC it's amazing this doesn't happen more often, it's a ticking time bomb, especially in older tenement neighborhoods. Great video!
I love when people see several men sitting and watching 2 men work but in reality it’s several me with a different job and task . You have men that dig , mechanics that put the pipe together, Forman , inspector ect. Plus they all can’t be in the hole at the same time
It’s called working for a Union.
Everyone has their specific jobs.
No one is allowed to cross “department” lines, even if their help would benefit the job.
@@jeffohara5003 sounds like a bad way to do business.
@@thetman0068 It is. Forced unions in modern society cause all sorts of inefficiency. There's nothing wrong with employees voluntarily bargaining collectively, or voluntarily joining a union to have them be an intercessor for them with their employer, but when people are mandated or coerced by the state to join, then the problems occur. At that point the union becomes an unnecessary middle man that simply extorts money from the employees. Most public sector jobs in America are unionized, which makes little sense, since they already have special protections from the government, and New York state isn't right-to-work, so employees in the private sector can be forced to join a union.
@@litigioussociety4249 "unnecessary middle man who extorts money from workers" is literally the job title of capitalists
First off how many of you all have ever worked in the trades ? And without UNIONS, we would all be working for piss poor pay . And UNIONS don't discriminate by race, color, or sex . Everyone doing the same job gets EQUAL PAY . I'm enjoying my two UNION pension checks every month from my UNION job .
Loved the video John! I always find myself looking forward to hearing how your corner of Southern London is going at the end of the video.
I had an idea for a video, large scale blackouts. The US has seen a couple of those in the last few decades, some taking many days for the grid to come back online
I like this idea.
Oh god please no. What was wrong with the nuclear reactor and lost source incidents?
I love the use of that sound effect from 90's era VHS tapes 📼 PSA announcements/etc. At the transition points in the video. It gives it great ominous safety measures vibes
Thanks for observing that. I hadn't gotten the reference to 1990's (VHS) as wittily echoing 1890's. ....An old term for the Gilded Age you don't hear any more is: "The Gay Nineties." Besides the obvious shift in what "Gay" means, the "90's" doesn't mean 1890's anymore.
Thats surprising. I hated it. Was like nails on a chalk board for me. :s lol
I believe it's John's own music he makes for these videos, and it sounds very much influenced by the electronic band Boards of Canada.
The audio wow and flutter is a nice touch. Reminds me of watching videos in school in the 80’s.
Y’all do GREAT with these what I call “mini documentaries”. I love watching your movies
Excellent video, as usual. I only vaguely recall the incident, it didn't get a lot of coverage out here in California and I didn't catch the followup investigations.
A 45 minute wait time to investigate a gas leak seems crazy. I've reported the smell of gas once in Chicago (Commonwealth Edison) and twice in Monterey County, California (Pacific Gas and Electric). On all three occasions I was instructed to evacuate everyone, turn nothing electrical on or off, and to extinguish any open flames. Each time a technician arrived with a sniffer within 10 minutes or less, very impressive. My CA calls also got a Fire Department response, and both times the PG&E tech arrived first, they were that quick.
PG&E has a terrible safety reputation for maintenance but they do respond very quickly and effectively to customer safety calls.
Speaking of which, John, the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion might make for a good video. The cause was negligence, corruption, and misdirected funds, it cost eight people their lives, and it leveled the neighborhood.
I was very nearby when it happened and had just shopped at a grocery store right across the street from ground zero. The explosion was tremendous, it rattled my pickup enough that I almost lost control. It was behind me, and I seriously thought that a passenger plane had crashed given how loud it was and seeing an enormous pall of smoke rising so quickly (flights departing San Francisco International almost immediately pass over San Bruno).
Damn that is crazy, I am glad you are okay!
It would be a great topic for PD too
@@anthonykukla5384 Thank you. I was pretty shaken up when it happened, even moreso when I passed through the area a few days later. Some of the debris had landed in the parking lot I'd just left, damaging a few cars. The store had to close that day due to billowing clouds of toxic smoke.
I can't imagine what it must have been like for residents of the subdivision. It was a huge gas main that supplied many communities on the SF Peninsula. It took a while to shut it down, like the San Bernardino train wreck and fire in '89.
@@anthonykukla5384 Here's video from the store I'd just left:
th-cam.com/video/BHyrf1llJWs/w-d-xo.html
@@anthonykukla5384 This was the four-way stop I had just left. I was about 1/2 mile away when it happened.
th-cam.com/video/Ndp61RFXS5Q/w-d-xo.html
Building blew debris onto the Metro North mainline. Trains had a 30mph restriction in the area afterwards .
Love that you’ve been doing these videos based on NTSB reports . Pretty cool.
Harlem is a wonderful community and a time capsule of architecture, they don't deserve a fraction of the crap they have dealt with over the years.
Hey John keep up the great work! Just thought Id drop in to say I love the new rating system. The fact we have a more refined system as well as the legacy scale I think really helps better categorize the severity of the disasters. Needless to say id like to see it continue. Thanks!
I would say the fault was purely the fault of the city and its non-maintenance of the sewer. Even it the T-Joint was good and not faulty the broken sewer would continue to was away the soil around it eventualy leading to a situation that would crack even an up to spec T-joint in the gas line. So the result would be roughly the same it would have just taken longer to occur.
The animation of the sewer system in 1873 is spot on. The brown logs had me rolling. Don't know why. Love your content though, very informative, thank you Sir.
Logs? oh, I thought they were supposed to be turds!
Would love to see a video of the Andover, MA gas explosions. Several cities caught fire a few years ago, and there hasn't been much media coverage since the incident. Love your videos!
Considering the population density of the area, it's surprising that only 8 people died. It probably has with the time of day. 9:30am most people are already at work. Had this happened at 6:30am the death toll probably would have been much higher.
Hopefully everyone had an awesome holiday and is having a great Saturday. Thanks for the upload P.D. !
I think we call Victorian times- Reconstruction. The period after the Civil Wat
Reconstruction is a term only used to describe the Southern (Conferderate) States.
Ya'll up North had minimal damage (comparatively) to the Southern States.
The South has never truly recovered.
@@yvettenoland5500Reconstruction is absolutely the right term for the time period of the late 19th century. It has meaning beyond the actual act of building. Clearly you haven’t recovered, your comment is a beautiful blend of ignorance and grievance. Maybe don’t try to own people and you won’t get wrecked?
@@Matt-xc6sp Thanks for letting me know that the term has been used for other times/places!
My ignorance definitely is showing! I will seek to further my education.
Your reply is a great example of how limited knowledge can be and I definitely appreciate the schooling!! There is always more to learn. I was thinking way too locally, wasn't I?!
I remember watching this at Work… I had just went on break and saw it in the News here in California RIP to the Victims… I do hope you cover the second New York explosion a year or two later! The East Village Explosion!
Who else holds on till the end to get the London weather report?
Always!
Sunny and far too warm for the date here in northern New Jersey!
Cloudy and chilly, mid-Alabama.
I remember not long after this happened going into the city with my brother - don't remember why, looking to see the rubble where this building was as my train passed, and being dumbfounded. One thing to see the devestation in the news, totally another to see it in person.
Recently half of the city I work in was dug up to replace old water and sewage lines, which around 100 years ago were put in with copper and cast iron lines. Needless to say, they corrode and need to regularly be replaced and upgraded.
I wish my city would do that. Instead, they just replace them in five foot sections as they fail. You'd figure at some point it would be more cost effective to replace the entire water line rather than replacing it piece by piece, but whatever.
@@handles_are_dumb_01
Are you willing for your city to raise your taxes to start digging up streets and replacing them in big chunks? Because it cost money
@@neilkurzman4907 Yeah, that's the hard question. Overall, it's going to cost more to replace it a piece at a time, but getting people to accept such a large amount at once would be quite difficult.
But there is some absurdity in what they're doing now. They just repaved the main street a few years ago... And then shortly after ripped up big sections as water lines broke. Seems incredibly stupid to not have replaced those lines in their entirely when the road was replaced. Now we have a three year old road that is bumpy as hell because the patches after pipe replacements aren't exactly don't correctly.
Always learn something new! Ty for your consistency and hard work! Be kind, be helpful, be vigilant, and be safe everyone! ❤
I usually listen to your videos at work without being able to watch.
Weekend uploads are the best, since I get to watch!
That vintage British documentary vibe your soundtrack provides these videos is really cool. I love it!
1:46 This time period in American history goes by Reconstruction (~1865-1877; the decade after the Civil War) then the Gilded Age (~1870-1900).
I would place 99% of the blame on the sewer line being ignored for years. The gas line T-junction would have failed no matter how good it was when the ground was washed away allowing main to sag.
2:28 😆🤣😆 I laughed out aloud at the turds animation. 👏 Bravo John.
John's famous for those animated and, dare I say huge, turds. They've made other cameo appearances.
this happened in my city (Seattle) in the neighborhood of Greenwood in 2016. a natural gas explosion blew up a city block when someone left a pilot light on inside of the Gyro spot. luckily it was around 2am. I live about 4 or 5 blocks away and it still rumbled my entire apartment and knocked stuff off the walls. i thought a tree had fallen or something. i was streaming The Division with my buddy and in the playback you could hear the explosion in the background. it was so loud it distorted my mic audio.
Love your videos John. And how you tell us about the weather in your part of S London. Freezing with snow on the ground and overcast here in Eastern Washington State, US.
No algorithm brought me here. I was bored and curious. As a life long New Yorker I remember this incident. You just know it’s bad here when a Brit is able to point out the audacious way this city does things. Gotta love this channel! I subscribed. 💯😎
I'm loving the cassette affects on the transitions
If you're going to refer to a period of American history based on who's president at the time, the preferred terminology is typically administration like "the Grant Administration" or "the Bush Administration"
Bah, I prefer the turning of it into a new word a la Victorian and Edwardian like the British do lol
It quite literally doesn't matter.
Yes. Reconstruction would also work here.
Jacksonian and Jeffersonian are two notable exceptions. Wish Teddy got an age named after him. Would have been a banger of an age.
You should do a video on the danish fireworks disaster at Seest in 2004. 760 homes (2000 people) evacuated and a blast that ended at 2,2 at the richter scale.
"obviously the cause was what I spent 5 minutes talking about in the introduction"
Could have guessed that 😅
Love your videos, keep up the good work!
“If it don’t look broke we won’t fix it!” - the American way of dealing with our failing infrastructure
If it's not completely broke and as long as it's still working atleast partly, we won't worry about it until it fails completely, then we will fix it. Americas infrastructure modo for sure. America's government is too concerned with giving all the people's tax money thats supposed to go to fixing infrastructure to other countries for things like gender studies or paying for their wars.
Always in time and hope you can cover Ozone Disco Fire in the philippines back in 1996, really appreciate the hard work John!
These videos are short, straight to the point and well done. I’m well into 2 hours of a new addiction.
I’m in Upper West Harlem now and what’s scary is I know for sure there are gas systems and other things failing and getting older and older.
Being partially responsible for a disaster,
the city obviously deserved getting the Lion-share
of the settlement, not the victims. ...
Uh, so does anyone else notice the eyes and mouths at the end?
Why did you point that out? because of your comment I went back to the video and was disturbed
Great content. Love all your videos. Don't change a thing. Love the intro music especially.
Laziness is always sad to see. Especially when it causes this kind of damage. "The road is sagging, should we do something about it? Nah, let's just patch it and call it a day."
Did you ever cover the Enschede fireworks factory disaster in the Netherlands? It being located in a residential area, what can possibly go bad 🤔.
Victorian would be correct, though it would be more specific to refer to it as the "Gilded Age".
The Victorian era in the US is generally subdivided between the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Gilded Age.
I enjoy learning and watching these videos, so imagine my surprise to find this one! A disaster in my area!!!! I used to ride the MN train for yeaaarrssss and I couldn't recall this at all...until I continued watching and some parts started to sound familiar. Thank you for this. I did not know a lot about what really happened. My heart goes out to those families who are STILL mourning their loved ones.
The Blame Game. The only thing companies and govt organization are good at doing.
Just sayin' on behalf of all Aussies thank you for your well timed upload ❤️
All of us returning from the pubs with a new vid to fall asleep to; then rematch in the morning.
Cheers mate! Blinky, on behalf of of all 3/4 pissed Aussies ✌️
Thank you! Don’t forget to have some ballast so the hangover isn’t too bad
I was FDNY from 1980-2003. We responded to these events every so often, but this video is especially galling. Everyone who passed the buck should have been jailed for life. Those services are vital for the city to function, and must be maintained for safety. Since a few callous swine allowed this known issue to get worse, life in prison is the only remedy.
The quality of plainly difficult videos are so good as a content creator myself on another channel i know how “plainly difficult” it can be to create videos ❤️ love it
The 'analog horror' vibe music at around 9:00 is surprisingly appropriate for the tone of the video. Excellent production/editing.
Damn I’ve never been this early before. Love your videos man.
I liked the animated stools.
As a New Yorker I’ve never heard anyone say “consolidated Edison” honestly didn’t even know that’s what it stood for. Learn something new every day.
Your music is so good with your videos :D
Thank you check out my second channel for more music!
Great work as usual John!
One thing I would want you cover better in your videos is the aftermath. For me at least it was a bit unclear who paid who and why? And were there some actual consequence for the negligence the city showed? Did the survivors get new apartments? etc etc
Yay disaster
I don’t recall hearing about this one. Thank you for enlightening me!
Un-official FDNY response: 0930 E58/L26 transmit the verbal for a loud boom. L26 arrives a few minutes later and transmits a 10-60 (major emergency (box alarm with numerous special units added.) Within an hour, the 5th alarm had been struck.
You should cover the Bozeman gas line explosion. Lots of warning missed
In America it's called the reconstruction era. We were reconstructing from the civil war.
The "sidenote" caught me off guard and I burst out laughing.
Excellent video!
I worked on gas for 25years & we spent most of that time getting rid of old low pressure lines .We also replaced cast iron with steel & plastic.Gas takes time to accumulate before it can explode.Thats what happened here
Gilded age or Victorian period is fine, I've heard them used rather interchangeably, even though Victorias reign encompasses pre and post civil war.
Loved the sewer "logs" 😂
I thought it was a disaster involving ship? The brown kind 😎
I have been watching a slow collapse in a Walgreens driveway that has been patched twice now. It is around 30cm across and last seen at around 4cm deep in the center.
As to Explosions look up the Port Chicago Blast in WW II. My dad slept through it further south down the bay. He was woken up to find he and his mattress on the floor. He then had to do accountability checks for his small unit in which he was the second senior NCO.
thank god, ive been wondering what the weather was like in your corner of south england all day
Im pretty sure its still called victorian, British global cultural hegemony was very strong.
Off topic ish, but am I the only one who finds the name "Consolidated Edison" just hit weirdly? As in mental images of a discombobulated Thomas Edison being recombobulated into some sculpture version of a Picasso.... maybe I'm just weird when I am utterly sleep deprived. 😂😂
I find more disturbing to abbreviate Consolidated to Con. Or perhaps it is just being honest.
@@HansLasser With all the bullshit I've seen regarding ConEd, I'd have to agree there. 😂
It is what I think when I hear it too. I am weird normally, it gets worse if I’m sleep deprive. Thanks for the term recombobulated.
I'm just clicking on the video & haven't watched it yet, but can I just say that the short intro music clip is probably the most dramatic music I've heard. I LOVE it!!! Great choice!
I live in an ex-coal mining high risk area and despite the problems of mining subsidence, mine gas and the high risk of ground fires authorities still see fit to allow housing and even railway stations to be built on it. Lessons will never be learned until those managing businesses are held accountable for that companies failings.
Another disaster that might be worth looking into is the Great Molasses Flood of 1919
I'm not 100% sure but I think he's already coverd this. If not I know many other channels like his all very good as well have coverd it.
Oh! Oh! The Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster!
One other reason i am glad i don't live in NYC. Also we do call it the Victorian period. It is easier to call it something that was already going on.
The entire country is using monopolies to contract their infrastructure and wondering why their power grid is always failing and why no one shows up when they report overgrown powerlines.