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One thing that I do wish you had covered was that many rural homes are still offered gas contracts as part of wells drilled on their land and in many cases these connections are not odorized (which was a contributing factor in several natural gas home explosions in my area over the years). Similarly a few years ago, it became legal to ship non-odorized liquefied natural gas by rail.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10504204/ "Generally, three chemical classes of organosulfur compounds are used in the natural gas industry in North America: alkyl mercaptans such as t-butyl mercaptan (TBM) defined by a terminating S-H (thiol) group; alkyl sulfides or thioethers such as dimethyl sulfide (DMS) defined by a dual-linked sulfur atom; and cyclic odorants such as tetrahydrothiophene (THT) that have a sulfur atom linked within a saturated CH ring structure. Unlike the E.U., U.S. federal odorization laws do not list specific compounds or concentrations that must be used; therefore, odorant use within the U.S. has generally been regarded as proprietary. The proprietary nature of chemical odorization introduces uncertainty surrounding which odorants are used and at what concentrations. This is particularly the case for the compounds methyl mercaptan (MM) and ethyl mercaptan (EM) based on conflicting evidence of reported use. Ortiz [8] notes that methyl mercaptan is not used as a natural gas odorant due to its low molecular weight and high reactivity. This claim is supported by other publications including reports from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the American Chemistry Council (ACC), where methyl mercaptan is explicitly considered to not be acceptable for use as a natural gas odorant [16-18]. These claims, both from industry and government sources alike, contradict similar documentation from the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and other sources affirming methyl mercaptan use in U.S. natural gas systems [19-22••]."
As kids we played darts in the cellar and put the board on a silver pipe, some darts hit the pipe and stuck. As kids (pre school) we had a great laugh and moved on. About an hour later, my bigger brother came home and he smelled gas. He called the gas provider but was told "you can´t smell gas, it has no smell". So we stayed in the house. When my mum came home later, the gas smell was everywhere and she immediately called everyone out and we went to the neighbors to call the fire station (back in the 80th, pre mobile phones ;)) The result was that the whole street had to be evacuated, luckily nothing happened, but the fireman told us even a light switch could have started an explosion. And he told us that the guy at the gas company was technically right, you can´t smell gas and that's why they put something in it so you can. I hope a gas company today would react differently, even when a kid called.
@@jwalster9412 I'm imagining some pendant wasn't able to make the -leap in logic- logical deduction that they were smelling someting; As a result of -{hypoxia: gas-supply or exhaust leak, intoxication: cough syrup, or chronic fatigue}- some common 'temporary' impairment; And had the next reply been "Then [we] are smelling _the odorizer_ added to the gas!" they would have awakened enough to provide a useful response. But yeah; people did tend to be actively-unhelpful/hostile to children on the phone into the 90's.
"He called the gas provider but was told "you can´t smell gas, it has no smell"." That sounds extremely puzzling since you'd expect them to odorize their gas. I can think of 3 options what that could mean: 1) The gas from that provider actually wasn't odorized. (Yikes!) 2) The gas *was* odorized but at least this employee wasn't aware of even such a basic fact of their business. 3) The employee *did* know that the gas was odorized but deliberately provided false information. The option 1 would be the worst one of these.
@@seneca983 Arguably, option 3 is actually worse, as it would elevate any incident from "operational incompetence" to "intentional malice and trying to get a customer killed".
Many years ago, the chemistry dept. at the London college I worked at made the mercaptan odorizer and it somehow got flushed down the drain, causing a major incident and evacuation of several surrounding buildings.
Had something similar happen to me during my time in Uni. Me and a colleague were merrily clicking away on our tables and results in a side wing of the university just over our lab. Then a horrid horrid smell chocked us. Something similar to garlic and mercaptan used in CNG, but many times stronger. We had to flee our office in a rush. Only after a day a lab technitian from the neighboring "fuel and oils" department confessed she had some "minor" glitch in the experiment she was running on some new mercaptan .
I know a similar incident in Sweden maybe 10-15 years ago. I think it was THT, an extremely powerful odorant used for gas that was spilled in pure form in the sewer.
My mother, born in 1924, was always afraid of gas. One time I asked her why, and she told me about a friend who was killed trying to light her gas oven, not knowing that there was a gas build-up. I asked her how she could have possibly missed the smell of the gas, and that's when my mother told me that they add the smell now, and gas had no smell at the time. Aligns perfectly with your video!
Safety rules are not written to protect the employee, they came into existence to protect the employer from the law. Making the employee safer is just a side effect.
I’ve been to the New London School Explosion museum twice, I live not far from there. When I was a kid my grandparents told me stories of classmates they lost in the explosion. They didn’t know each other at the time, but neither one of them was at school that day because they had to help their famlies on their respective farms. My great grandfathers were part of the crowd that went down to help with the rescue and recovery efforts. In the New London School Explosion museum, there is a Western Union condolence telegram from one A. Hitler, at that time the Chancellor of Germany. It’s so strange to see that knowing what was to unfold just a few years later.
I've been to that museum and seen that letter, and agree that it's chilling to read, given the context of history. If I recall correctly, there's one from J. Stalin as well.
It is said that, initially at least, Mr Hitler was voted in to power, in a democratic election, (a cautionary tale there, for voters in all elections). Some sources say he did "some" good things in his earlier days, like he upgraded Germany's motorways. I've also heard reports that in order to "work harder for longer" he was taking some form of amphetamines or "uppers" for a long time. Whether these badly affected his entire personality later on in his life, we could never be sure.
Yes! So crazy that Hitler sent the telegraph! Nobody knew he was crazy yet. My grandpa and his brother were there and my grandpa was buried. (AJ Thompson and Joe Thompson- in the event your family knew them. I guess most of the victims and contemporaries are gone now though. Interesting stuff.
@@Apollo-Computersno. Sure they might have had more knowledge but it’s just because back then people didn’t give a sh*t. Like we’ve made advances and have more regulations. That’s the real reason. Also, that’s supported by the literal previous sentence where a janitor and a random plumber installed the line. Like??? Bruv
@@Apollo-Computers there were just as many cheats and scams back then. they were just smaller because they can use instagram or IPOs to reach 10M people today
Were people just really trusting back then? if I heard "I'm a radiator salesman", my thoughts are "I don't want your product. Even if I did, I know what you're offering is going to be low end garbage. You are only slightly above an actual con artist in my eyes." Not "I bet this guy can inspect gas pipes."
Recently, (within the last 2 years) the NTSB released a report about another gas explosion in Texas, with the frightening finding that the local clay soil had stripped the odorant from gas entering the soil from a leaking gas main. I bought a methane detector for my home after learning that.
Natural gas detectors are definitely a good choice to have. The common mentality that they aren't necessary due to the odorant can fail in a number of ways. I do gas leak inspections for the local gas utility. I've had numerous times where I'll enter a house and immediately smell gas with my on person detector screaming at me. Will alert the homeowner to it and they will say they don't smell a thing. It's easy to become nose blind to the mercaptan especially if the leak is small and the gas concentration builds up over time. The detectors are so cheap now so not really any reason not to just have a few installed around the home.
@@RaLiChu”olfactory fatigue” is indeed a very real thing. Not just with methyl mercaptan in methane but also h2s and plenty of other toxic and flammable gases.
In my opinion gas detectors should be mandatory to install, they are pretty unexpensive too and work great. At home I have installed a detector that in case of a leak shuts the main gas line with a solenoid operated valve.
@@stephenviggiano1610 It's not just a problem with noses. Most commonly available detectors suffer from the same issue during prolonged exposure - meaning that just because the alarm has stopped sounding doesn't mean things are safe yet
@@miscbits6399 true. Almost all combustible/flammable gases are toxic as well, with very few exceptions. Our method of protection is a standard wheatstone bridge catalytic sensor and we operate with a standard turnback at 10% LEL.
@@AdamEspinosa Yup, maybe 90% of the kids in my high school didn't wear seatbelts, and this was in 2009-2012! Senior year I got roped into driving classmates on a field trip, and they were _pissed_ I made them buckle up, lol!
Fossil fuels. They all cause asthma and heart disease when burned but they do it over the course of decades so no one notices or cares (unless you're an unlucky child who gets asthma early)
I bought a house that had an old natural gas refrigerator in the basement. The gas company came to inspect the house, and red-tagged it. I asked the inspector what the limit was for allowable gas concentration, and he replied "Zero". I guess I have to agree.
It was tagged out because of the refrigerant (ammonia ) used in the gas refrigerator. The gas company should’ve given you a card about free disposal and a $50 reward for turning it in.
I used to work at Mother Frances Hospital in Tyler, TX where the injured were taken. The hospital’s proud history of opening early due to tragedy is told to all employees even today. Thank you for the explanation of how this happened.
Was a bit confused by this so I looked it up - for those who don't know, the hospital was brand new and due to be officially opened the next day. That ceremony was cancelled, obviously. How fortunate it was ready, although tragic in timing.
In Madill, Oklahoma, in the late 1960s, when I was young, my mother worked with the sweetest lady. She seemed elderly to me. I still remember her sadness as she recounted the story of that day. Her only son died in that disaster. It haunted her all the days of her life. Thank you for analyzing it.
I used to work for a chemical testing lab. The kind of place that gets the data to go on Safety Data Sheets, to say what damage would be caused if stuff is spilled into the environment. We once had to test a mercaptan. The smell of it pure is so overwhelming, horrifically, bad, and persistent. You're talking forced air fed RPE when weighing it out, until it was diluted down and having to bleach everything afterwards to remove the smell. Treat again afterwards to remove the bleach residue. One of the worst lab tasks we ever had. 🤢
I once worked in a warehouse where 55 gal. drums of ethyl mercaptan were stored. Even though we never opened these drums, and never had a spill, you could smell the stuff if you were anywhere close to the drums. I'm not sure whether this was due to traces of vapor seeping through the threads of the bungs, or from residue on the outside of the drums from spillage or splash when the drums were filled.
"Excitement and hope permeated the crowds gathered in a dusty farm carved from the piney woods in east Texas." I never noticed Grady's terrific writing before; and then I noticed the seamless graphics. The story-telling on this channel is exceptional.
In a cemetery near where I grew up in Louisiana, there is the grave of a little boy whose gravestone said that he was killed in the New London school explosion. Thanks, Grady, for the excellent report.
It's unfortunate that tragedy is often required for changes to be made. My grandfather was killed servicing a gas line prior to the additive's use. I am glad it now helps protect others.
Natural gas in China still has no odorant, at least in my in laws apartment, and given that it's a 12 story building, that fact sure keeps me up at night when I stay there.
I wonder if it has to do with the fact that China imports the majority of its natural gas, a lot of it via LNG tankers as well. You'd think it wouldn't be that hard to odorize it at the unloading terminal tho or wherever it's evaporated and added into the supply...
It's always a good day when you put out a video! Your older video on MSE walls was what made me realize I wanted to be civil engineer. It's been 8 years since it then, but I'm finally able to go to university full time and start my engineering courses. Thank you for all the content you put out! Truly an inspiration
My friend Felix had anosmia (loss of sense of smell) from a head injury. She made herself a note to remind herself to check her stove and water heater occasionally to make sure they were functioning properly. Once when I visited her the place reeked of gas - she'd accidentally left her stove on without lighting it overnight - scared the hell out of me and her both! Her place wasn't well insulated, so just leaving a burner on probably couldn't have exploded the place, but....
@@scottthewaterwarrior Yes they do, and yes she should. They're a bit pricey, but it's worth it to save her life! Gas is surprisingly safe, but only if you know when there is a leak.
My father's family lived in a 2nd story flat in an inner city tenement in the 1920's . He often told the story of when he and his 10 YO brother were sitting on their balcony and the 3 story tenement across the street blew up and came down into a pile of rubble right in front of them. Neither of them were hurt but it's something they never forgot.
As an ASME code inspector I worked in that part of East Texas, Longview specifically. One of the companies that I inspected for fabricated and tested a version of the oderizers you refer to in the video. I have certified dozens of those over my time there in East Texas. All of the old hands at that company have a deep memory of the New London story.
I’m glad to see this topic covered so well. My wife published a book about the New London disaster, “New London School: In Memoriam, March 18, 1937, 3:17 P.M.”. She even had lunch with Walter Cronkite after publishing! That said, it is a truly heartbreaking story that influenced the petroleum industry to this day. Thanks for your fine coverage.
I grew up in Bowie MD, The soil was found to strip the smell added to to make Natural gas smell. After a Few houses blew up, the gas company had to go around and fix all of the leaks along the gas distribution lines
Had a contract job in Colorado tracing really old natural gas lines that supplied gas for free from the oil fields to residents at the time. The oil gave out ages ago but the gas kept flowing. For safety the State had required anyone who had these in their home to let them know so they get them safely shut-in. However, many folks were more worried about losing the free gas than suffocating or having their homes detonate. Fast forward to the early 2000’s and even with homes catching fire and blowing up, and people being hospitalized, as the corroded pipes were rapidly giving out, they STILL didn’t want to admit they had it in their homes, even when the old maps showed it was, my FID/PID was screaming danger, and there was a clear line of dead grass above what could only be a badly leaking gas line leading directly into their home. Many even got in our face as we were using ground penetrating radar and gas detection gear on the streets and fields to map all these lines for later closure work. Most common complaint was that everything was fine because, since there wasn’t a smell, there wasn’t any leaks… 🙄
Hi Grady, I believe I first learned about the New London explosion on Modern Marvels: Engineering Disasters maybe 20 years ago, and I periodically read about it. I have to say I actually learned a bit of new information, and found this better produced and less sensationalized than the Modern Marvels segment. In a world of "content" that's little more than reading a Wikipedia entry, videos like this are refreshing.
In The Netherlands they add tetrahydrothiophene to natural gas instead of ethanethiol. Makes it easier to distinguish between sewer smell and a gas leak.
Great video! My understanding from my time as a volunteer firefighter is that the odorant is only added at the relatively low-pressure local stage of the gas distribution system. Gas in long-distance pipelines and gas used by large industrial customers who get gas at long-distance pipeline pressure does not have the odorant.
In 2 different places I've lived I smelled natural gas leaks. In the first place the people responsible came, found the leak (it was the meter) and fixed it. Second place guy came, said it was our cat litter, We waited 2 days, called again, new guy came out, he said our line outside was leaking and gave us very explicit instructionbs to tell the person who had to fix it. Good man.
Yikes. I work in electrical related industries both as a job and hobby, and it's very apparent how designs, regulations, and standards have changed over the years. A co-worker and I often joke about how safety was a recent invention, seemingly obvious things like live chassis radios and TVs containing glowing vacuum tubes in wooden boxes with an unpolarized power cord were just the norm back then, and no doubt we've learned the hard way why that's not a great idea either. Though not something you *should* rely on as a safety device, the GFCI has likely saved countless lives from electrocution too.
There is an electronics channel I watched off and on where the guy repaired old radios and he did mention that often times the metal chassis that all the tubes and stuff were affixed often served as the neutral for the AC side of the circuit. Meaning if the non polarized plug was plugged in the other way the metal could become energized as it was now connected to the hot. He would bring this up because its something to watch for when testing vintage electronics outside their wood or bakelite enclosure. Might also explain the point also being made to use an isolation transformer.
@@Loanshark753 Even though there's 120V or 240V or whatever between live and neutral, the neutral side is supposed to have no voltage between it and ground. Ground is connected to... the ground. Earth. Pipework, exposed metal, ect is all connected to this "ground" so that the end user will never come in contact with two things with a voltage other than 0 volts between them. This is why modern appliances have a ground connection. If a fault happens inside the appliance, the grounded metalwork that the end user is exposed to *can't* become anything other than 0V, and the internal fault will trip your circuit breaker. However, this wasn't always the case. Earlier electronics such as TVs and radios often were "hot chassis" meaning one of the two wires going into it was connected DIRECTLY to the metalwork inside. With an unpolarized plug, that's a 50/50 chance of making everything inside that device 120V or 240V above ground potential, meaning if you were touching a radiator, damp concrete, ect and also came into contact with something in that device, it could be fatal. Some appliances even had exposed metalwork connected directly to an unpolarized cord, which is seriously dangerous. As for modern things, even ungrounded stuff often can benefit from being polarized. The fuse, power switch, ect is often only on one wire, and with polarized stuff it'd be on the live wire so that nothing inside is "live" when the fuse is blown or switch is off. With an unpolarized device, the fuse or switch might be on the neutral side, which means that the stuff inside *could* still be energized at mains voltage when turned off, such as a toaster's heating elements. I hope my 4AM ramblings made sense :)
@@Loanshark753i suspect the reson older gear had the chance of wiring up a chassis to 110v and other bits of danger is that the designers had the “ if you open this up, you better know what you’re doing “ mindset. Your safety is not our responsibility it’s yours.
I got a call from a building I was going to close down later on. "We smell gas. What do we do?" I called a senior gas engineer and he got an engineer with a sampling machine. When I was going round I thought, that's not gas out of a pipe, that's gas out of a person. I went straight to the inlet and turned it off. Pushed the emergency exist open and discovered that the small people in peril had all been taken away. The smell was still there and so were both the gas people. It was NOT the gas from the supply. So I thanked them and got a friendly grilling from the senior man. Personally I think the smell was drifting on the wind from the school with about 650 little children.
My grandfather, AJ Thompson, was in the building (5th grade) when this happened. He was buried alive for several hours. His little brother, Joe Thompson, was in the other part of the building in 3rd grade. He ran home to alert their mother, Ruth Goss Thompson who was home with 3 younger sons. This incident forced local Mother Francis Hospital to open its doors before it was completed. My grandpa, AJ, always feared being underground in any way despite being a boxer in the Navy. He took me to Carlsbad Cavern in 1983 because he thought I should see it. I had never seen him nervous in my life before that. But he did it.
The home I grew up in, in Houston was built by Columbus Joiner and given to his daughter Ola Bell in 1947 as a wedding present. "Dad" Joiner was really quite the character. The Daisy Bradford #3 was drilled in the location that Ms. Bradford chose as the first two wells on her property were dry holes. Joiner was about to give up and move on. However Daisy Bradford had an agreement with Joiner and told him he was NOT going to quit until he had drilled the 3rd hole which they had agreed to. Ms. Bradford told Joiner where to drill. Where her chicken coop stood. I had this story told to me by Ola Bell Joiner Brister many times. Her son, John was my closest friend. The house still stands in Houston.
We replaced and rerouted gas pipes in our house a couple of years ago. Old steel pipes were cut up and stored outside, while new ones were installed. Everything went fine, welding was good and no leaks were detected by two independent methods of measuring. The interesting thing is, that the Methanethiol that is being added as an odorant accumulated over the years on the inside wall of the gas pipes. The old pipes, cut to pieces and lying outside, were a source of that familiar "gas smell" every time I went near to them. They did smell for several days. It was strange. Some of the old pipes were later used as reinforcement for a concrete retaining wall that we build between the house and the garden, together with rebar.
The city of Rouen, France, I have left 5 years ago got an industrial catastrophe at Lubrizol company plant (11 years then 4 years ago), where tons of Mercaptan was released in the atmosphere. The smell was so strong that I cause hundreds of calls to the fire department… hundreds kilometers from the source ! The smell was even noticeable from Great Britain.
Hey i was studying in Rouen during the 2nd lubrizol accident... Mont-Saint-Aignan, la fac Students made lots of funny memes about Lubrizol and the way the prefet assessed the situation. Ravie de voir d'autres Rouennais par ici !
I went to New London school, and grew up exactly 2 miles from the discovery well. If you're ever in the area be sure to stop at the London Tea Room and museum.
Sadly a lot of people assume laws, rules & standards (even entire government agencies!) exist "for no good reason". Or worse, were set up only to control people, or whatever. Videos like this are a public service. Thanks Grady!
true, but sometimes some regulations seam very outdated by new regulations. Still I do believe some of those outdated once are better kept than removed and wrongly acted upon
I love when you do videos on disasters. I love learning about this stuff, but so many channels that focus on tragedies like this are either ill informed, overdramatic, or these days just straight up AI written, voiced and images. Thanks for keeping it real.
In Oz when I was younger, we used to call the odorant "skunk juice." I recall going through lectures before starting my shift doing security at the Boral plant in St. Peters, Sydney - the day after a tank (26,000 gallon) of Liquefied Natural Gas exploded in 1990, setting fire to a further 3 tanks. It was fascinating to see indications showing the intensity of the fires, with one truck in virtually pristine condition on the side away from the fire, but an unpainted, rusted hulk with metal bands where the tyres should have been, and traces of glass down the door where the window had melted, on the other side. You'd better believe we were all sniffing for trace odors when we walked around the plant that day.
Something similar but on much smaller scale happened to my fathers competitor in rural northern Michigan. My father worked in HVAC and his competitor was hired to work on someones gas furnace in their summer home. (I don't know if it was natural gas or propane. ) he was working on the regulator and trying to light the furnace and the house blew up, completely leveled the place. Sadly he past on in the explosion. After investigating it was found that the gas supply was unscented and he didn't realize he was accidently pumping the place full of gas.
Minor point, Tyler is west of New London. Good episode, Sir. As an East Texas native, we all grew up with this story and that of the Grandcamp as part of our local history of industrial accidents.
I was working in gas transportation company and was instructed and shown how odorant is added to gas in pipe. Odorant is always added just before pumping it to city or town pipes. Gas between transportation facilities has no odorant in it. I believe this can vary from country to country. I was amazed by the amount of odor substance within gas, it was added by small drops which weight is 0.02 gram. Standard amount was 16 grams per 1000 cubic meters of gas. Overall, working on such facility was an interesting experience.
My husband’s grandmother attended this school. She didn’t go that day-her mother kept her home because she had been having severe headaches. We never knew-she didn’t talk about it, and we only found out when her sister gave her eulogy. Thank you for this video-it helps us understand what she and her classmates endured that day.
Maybe you should make a new series out of engineering disasters that were so catastrophic that they inform modern engineering best practices. You can call it "Impractical Engineering".
I remember many years ago - roughly 1990 - I was walking home from school and was almost home when I heard a strange noise. It had rained during the day, and one of the puddles right near my house had bubbles popping at the surface. I didn't smell anything, but I knew that puddle was very close to the gas line running down the street. Boston Gas came out with their sniffer truck, determined the leak was isolated, and replaced about 30 feet of gas pipe that night. The entire neighborhood had been scheduled for replacement in about 18 months, but that was accelerated because of the leak. They also moved any gas meters that were inside our houses to the outside. I know some people just cannot smell the ethyl mercaptan, but I can. I never did find out why I couldn't smell it that day.
Maybe it has to do with it bubbling up through water. The water could act as a filter, like in a smoking pipe. I'm not sure if methyl mercaptan is water soluble, but that could be it.
When a customer at Home Depot asks why I can't advise them on a plumbing project (legally we cannot quote plumbing _or_ electrical code unless licensed), I'm just gonna cite this video as why. (for the same question in _electrical_ department, i just gesture vaguely to ElectroBOOM's entire channel)
Another great video! I'm going into my 29th year teaching high school engineering and love to use your videos in class. This video works well for engineering as a trade, engineering ethics, and schools in general; all while being short, to the point, and interesting for kids to follow along. Great job Grady!
A chemistry teacher of mine worked at a gas plant where someone dropped a container of the odouriser chemical - immediate shower and change of clothes but on the bus home everyone got of the stop after they got on!
In the times of "town gas" made from roasting coal, the resulting gas was more often than not pretty bad smelling apparently (I'm too young to have experienced piped town gas, only ever the school test tube experiments), due to the sulphurous content of the coal leaving gaseous sulphur compounds in the the gas, so if you smelled rotten eggs (and you didn't have digestive troubles!), you very likely had a leak somewhere...
I *am* old enough to remember :-) The old 'town gas' made from coal, smelt very similar to the oderised natural gas - a guy came round and adjusted our gas hob etc, and explained that it had been oderised to smell the same as the old stuff.
I worked on Stanlow oil refinery near Ellesmere Port on the river Mersey, where they had a plant which made "stench" which was a gas used to odourise north sea gas.
I went to school in New London, graduated in ‘99, it’s crazy how many years have passed and I haven’t really thought about this in so long and now I see a video about. Pretty spot on from what I remember.
I’ve lived in Tyler for over 40 years. The New London disaster is still noted every year. In the boom days of the East Texas Oil Field, things were a bit like the Wild West. Tiny (or nonexistent) communities became boom towns, bursting with population influx and oil money while mired in mud streets-a little like the stories of Gold Rush towns in California. Kilgore became home to the World’s Richest Acre. Longview became an oil industry town and Tyler became the banking town, civic personalities that still persist to a certain degree today. But the little communities just sprang up in chaos, so it’s not surprising that New London mightn’t have utilized best practices in fueling the new school. Lots of new money to build a modern school, yes, but not the mindset to do everything professionally. I remember a documentary or history I saw/read decades ago that said the officials chose to use producer gas or casinghead gas for the school. In details, it wasn’t quite the same story as Grady reports, but the desire to heat for free underlies both. I imagine the older history was simplified in detail. It makes one pause to drive by the New London monument today.
The East Texas Oil Museum on the campus of Kilgore College is a neat place to learn about this part of history. Visiting their "street scene" is a source of fond memories from my youth.
I grew up near New London, and my great-grandmother attended that school. She moved away literally the day before the explosion happened. It's wild to think about how fortunate I am to even be here.
As a young adult I had been tasked with cleaning out the chemical cabinet at work. I was well trained in pH neutralization, but did not know much of chemicals and potential reactions with the different weak acids and bases I was using to neutralize these chemicals with. The supervisor came and reviewed the different chemical compounds and removed 3 of them stating that it would be dangerous to have me take care of those at the time. But, he missed a small bottle with a written paper label from the university. The label had a molecule drawn out on it and said Mercaptain. All of my neutralizing was done inside a fumehood so that gases produced did not gather inside. So when I slowly added this bottle into the solution it was being mixed with, all of the vapor was sucked up by the powerful suction. About 30 minutes later, crews were frantically inspecting everything in the area. They smelled the natural gas leak and it was extremely potent, having dumped about 20 cc of this into a pail that I could not smell. The inspectors were incredibly confused as they followed the scent of the mercaptain but their sensors showed no trace of natural gas. The supervisor ran back to where I had been working with diluting chemicals and picked up the bottle and shook his head that he had missed seeing the tiny bottle when he reviewed. I'm not sure what the repercussions were for us as a company. I know that it was not taken lightly and additional steps were added to our process where each chemical being disposed of had to be individually marked for disposal by the supervisor.
I live in New London - less than four miles from the location of the explosion. The current school was partially built with materials from the original school, and there is a memorial nearby we simply call the 'Cenotaph,' which means 'empty tomb' in Greek (since no one killed in the explosion was buried on site). There is a cemetery nearby that has scores of children who died that day, and it's sad to see so many kids who had their lives cut so short. As a kid in the 70s, I knew of several people nearby who were in or near the explosion that day, but being that it's now been 85+ years, I doubt anyone of them are still living.
This whole thing is jaw dropping, from Walter Cronkite saying later that no story equaled it, to the way the officials wrote the official report. Next time someone says we don't need zoning boards and permitting procedures, show them this. Safety rules were written in blood.
Years ago, my husband lost an aunt due to gas leak in her home that killed her while she slept. She was just 15. I live only about 100 miles from New London Texas and yet never heard this story. So tragic about this school. This eastern area of Texas is actually still low population, no really big cities, and each town is separated by many miles. Most people struggle for basics. I can understand how this horror happened. I don't think anyone could have dreamed it would happen.
First thanks for the video, it was enjoyable and informative. While I'm not sure many people will see this. If you are in a home that has natural gas, I urge you to buy and install a natural gas detector, and if you already have one test it to make sure it works. I was one the receiving end of a natural gas explosion back in 2005. Even with the added smell things can still cause it to be undetectable. In my case the break in the pipe was in the front yard and not in the house. So when it did finally make it's way over to the house the added chemical was filtered out by the ground. It's not something that happens often, but still it is better safe than sorry.
Recently a customer of mine was called to an abandoned schoolbuilding we help him develop. It was abandoned pending wrangling the bureaucrats, eco-protestors and other obstructionists and had been for years. It was often vandalised. The gas is still on there to power a single small boiler to keep frost out of the basement and frost damage from pipes. One set of vandals, gypsies, had broken their way inside the basement, then taken apart several gas pipes and the boiler, using unscrewing. Police saw a man carry a grinder inside and went after him. They arrested the man right as he was about to enter the basement, which reeked strongly of gas. There were markings on the gas main pipe: Those genius gypsies were about to take a grinder to a gas mains pipe, in the middle of a gas-filled room. If they'd gone ahead that would've ended the discussion of renovation vs demolition of the building in about 0.1 seconds. 😆
Grady, gave you visited the New London, TX Museum? Truly an inspirational tour. The docents are absolutely amazing to listen to. I'm fortunate to live about a mile from the DB#3. A beautiful area of Texas.
3:58 Oh well, from today's point of view, that's huge mistake right at the first step. Bus driver, local welder and salesman installing and inspecting it. yike
I'd trust the drivers (1930's, you would expect them to be pretty handy), janitors, n welder to do their best. But a salesman as a safety inspector is bone chilling. Crazy times when you could just drill into a pipe n huzzah, free gas! That said, the oven at a previous house was plumbed in using garden hose and jubilee clamps, and it worked. But I made the landlord pony up quite a bit to actually get it re-done properly. TBH, if I could get free gas like that, I probably would, but id put the Generator and boiler outside...
Thank you for covering this story. I am a VERY short drive from the town and the story of the New London school is essentially common knowledge in all of East Texas to this day. I actually have never seen the video footage before, that was fascinating. Here are some additional things to know as someone who has driven through New London and grew up near the town: 1. The school was rebuilt to honor the likeless of the original design as much as possible and has been preserved in memory of the tragedy. 2. Hitler sent a telegram offering his condolences after the event. His message read, "On the occasion of the terrible explosion at New London, Tex., which took so many young lives, I want to assure your excellency of my and the German people's sincere sympathy." 3. New London was a very promising town and was expected to grow into a large town in East Texas. Because the town's entire generation of youth was taken out in a moment, the town was never able to recover or grow and rapidly died off. It now has a population of 976 and consists of a few buildings in a heavily wooded rural area down a single tiny country road. It looks more like a community than a town. The most prominent building is the school, which elegant design stands out jarringly from the rest of the few small buildings around it. It really is one of those "blink and you miss it" towns. The only times I have been there was because it was the road I needed to take to reach a different location, there's really nothing there.
As an civil engineering intern it’s wild to think that anyone could claim to be an engineer, experienced or not. It makes me appreciate a bit more how thorough the laws and regulations are, knowing that we are standing on the shoulders of so many to come before us
Ten years ago, I was at work when I answered the phone. The woman on the other end asked for my boss. When I told her that he was not in the office, she matter-of-factly said that his house had just blown up! Evidently, the roofers had driven a nail through the roof and punctured a gas line to the water heater. Happily, they went to lunch. The postal service letter carrier, walking the route, had just delivered mail and was in the walkway next door. He was blown off his feet by the explosion, but not injured. All the windows in the neighboring houses that faced the explosion were destroyed. It is hard to believe that no one was injured or killed! This house was 50+ years old and the gas line was run through the attic near the roof. Current building codes would not allow this.
Grady, I've been watching your channel here and on Nebula for years... Your historical recounts and investigative style videos are my absolute favorite. Please continue to do them!
96 individual connections to separate heaters instead of just one to a main boiler installed by the local bus drivers, a welder and janitor, what could possibly go wrong? 💥😂
A few weeks after we moved in we walked into our new house, and when my wife started shouting to evacuate immediately because of a gas leak, I learned I could no longer smell the additives. My physician thought it was a nasal infection, and suggested irrigating the area. That didn't help, and I gave up. 10 years later I was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, for which loss of smell ~10 years earlier is a common precursor. My physician did not know this.
When I was very young my family and I had quickly evacuated our home because of the smell of gas., and I'm really struggling to come up with words to describe the melancholy and gratitude I feel in learning about what contributed to our safety on that day.
I was surprised that there was no need to change the burners in the individual radiators. When we changed gas supply around 1970 every appliance needed modified or replaced. But we were switching from coal gas to natural gas so the composition must have been different.
Could be that's what the reported headaches &c. were - incorrect burner sizing causing an increase in carbon monoxide output. Although this residue gas ought to be fairly similar to pure natural gas, maybe there's not enough of a difference.
If you're ever out in East Texas near New London, the East Texas Oil Museum in Kilgore is super interesting! It doesn't look like much from the outside, just a big building on the local community college campus, but this was one of my favorite museum visits. Even my non-museum-loving wife enjoyed the trip! There is so much really good information about the early days of oil production in East Texas. Not just the technical and geological aspects, but the civil and the cultural impact as well.
The East Texas Oil Museum's "street scene" is source of fond memories from my youth, and is a really engaging way to display and contextualize the "pile of period ephemera" that most museums stack in display cases.
I live above a bakery in Europe, and our heating system uses natural gas. One day, I smelled what seemed like natural gas in the closed bakery below and called the firefighters. They didn't find any gas leaks but agreed the smell was similar. They suggested it might be from the flour stockpiled in the bakery. I did some research and found that the smell of natural gas is due to added mercaptans, and interestingly, the Maillard reaction in bread also releases similar sulfur compounds like 2-furfurythiol and 2-methyl-3-furanthiol. So, it seems there is a link between the smells! Even though no bread was being baked that day, the flour might have caused the odor.
Sometimes I believe you can read my mind. We JUST covered the topic of "gas hazards" in a lesson at the local VFD. Edit: Looking good - the beard suits you.
My wife’s great grandmother was a senior at New London that year, but-unbeknownst to her parents-was off campus at a typing competition that day. After the explosion, her parents went to the school to search for her, identified a body, and went home heartbroken. Later that afternoon, their daughter walked through the front door unharmed. She was one of only (I think) 4 survivors in the senior class, and later in life had a nervous breakdown due to the guilt she carried from having survived while so many friends and classmates had been killed.
Years ago a tanker truck hauling the odour chemical had an accident just outside of my city . The amount of area that odour covered was incredible , basically the whole city!!
My garage always smells of natural gas. I have a high efficiency tankless water heater that regularly vents unburnt gas. It’s annoying because now I can’t smell if there is a leak. I have had the gas company plus others verify it’s fine. But it’s still a problem. So I installed an explosion detector in my garage. If natural gas, or other fumes, build up to the point they could ignite then an alarm will go off. Hopefully the alarm doesn’t cause a spark 😂
That is NOT normal. I have never had any gas appliance smell like gas when it operates like normal. You might have an issue with 'fall winds' entering your flue (idk the right translation) pushing combustion gases back into your house and causing abnormal combustion in general. A good water heater, even ones that are designed way back in the 1990s, have shut off systems for that.
@ecospider5 there is no situation where a NG appliance should “vent” gas into the living area. How is the water heater vented? Is it through a PVC pipe or a metal pipe? Have ALL the connections been checked for leaks? Could there be a leak from another location, but the water heater is just the most convenient explanation? You should never smell gas when an appliance works correctly.
@skoalsoldier Yes it is a pvc pipe going through the ceiling and roof of the garage. The main smell is not the garage it is outside. But the smell comes back in through the soffit vents because the garage is not sealed. So the burner turns off. Then the pressured exhaust fan ramps up and pushes the air out the pvc exhaust tube. Stopping any gas from collecting inside. I really don’t like the design. Even smelling that outside makes you less sensitive. Being sensitive to that smell is really important.
Natural gas and LPG are great energy sources for industry and homes. Clean burning, consistent performance, no smell while being used (fuel oil smells sometimes especially when igniter gets old or the fuel delivery system gets dirty. Such a hard story to hear.... But thankfully it brought change
I worked for almost 20yrs at a large gas utility in mass. 1 of my first major leak was on a 12in cast iron main. Going into houses you always cleared your CGI detector before going into houses and I did plus I have a great nose. When the street department arrived we were almost finished with our 300 foot investigation. They were barring holes and getting readings but there was no smell. I trusted my investigation but 2 other service tech's looked panicked after hearing no smell. I got put threw a cellar window and as I entered first floor the house alarm went off and immediately opened doors and we vented. The main was cracked and that was surprising for 12in cast iron. The main was encased in fine sand wich allowed it to scrub oderant out. Only time I ever seen that problem
You should definitely do a collaboration video with the channel Plainly Difficult (unless you have and I missed it). He covers various engineering and natural disasters (mine explosions, structure collapses, industrial accidents, etc).
I was working with a excavating crew a few years back. We had a skid steer. That of course had the extremely loud backup beeper. I had been with them for a few months. An as someone who was raised on a farm. Knew that if a piece of Heavy equipment is being used. Stay out of the way. . Or if you do have to work with it. Never walk in from behind of the equipment thats being used. I make sure to make Eye contact with the operator before i walk in. Well the backup beeper was about half as loud as usual. We had just hired a couple new guys a Father an son team. . Made sure the rules was clear during our safety meeting that morning. An the skid steer was having a backup beeper problem. We also wear Florescent Safety orange shirts. Or Florescent yellow. We was working on dressing up a yard and playground area. The skid steer was being used to place Pea gravel. The safety meeting that very morning had told us that the playground area is restricted an was not to be crossed on foot. Becausetgis very problem. We had a professional operator working the loader. He could dump an smooth out the gravel with the bucket. As good as 3 men could with a rake an shovel. The skid steer come in through a tight spot to dump a load of gravels. An had to backup an reverse to get back out to a spot wide enough to spin it around. The father had dropped a bag of black mulch into a draining ditch. That leads from the playground. He or nobody should even had been back there. An as he layed down on his belly to fish the bag back out. . The skid steer was making its reverse to get back out. An a terrible accident happened. The driver had looked into the backup camera as he was backing out. He turned his head to make sure his bucket was clearing the swings. An just like that we lost a worker before lunch. ..anyone who has ever worked with or drove a skid steer know how loud they are. This poor man had layed down right after the driver turned to look forward. We have the biggest John deer skid steer that they had to offer. . An it run over his back an belly with one of the tracks. He was able to mumble out to his son that he loved him before he passed away. An as i write this with tears dripping onto my phone. People don't realize how dangerous. Or how fast a accident happens. That forever changes the people involved. A son lost his father. The operator quit that very day. An that is the saddest thing ive seen on a jobsite since i started an that was almost 2 years ago. I can still hear the scream of that boy. That lost the most important person in his life.
The whole town coming together to clear debris, overnight, in a rainstorm, and sift through it all looking for body parts---including those of children---is incredibly admirable. Humans are amazing, and can complete amazing feats when working together. 2000 tons cleared in 17 hours with little to no special equipment is nothing to sneeze at. But I can't imagine being the parent of a child or children who passed away at New London School. Can you imagine if you had multiple children who all died there on that day? Or your only child?
In medicine hat, AB, Canada.we gave away free gas to any business or factory that wanted it. Only thing was, you had to drill your own well. There was no question you would find gas, we're on top of a massive pocket. However today the result is, 400+ privately drilled "orphan" wells spread all around the city. From abandoned factories, to the well under the old hospital. Which was now located underneath a house across from the police station. Or another well, that started leaking in the spring of 2021 and by summer, it had closed down a road downtown and we had a service rig DOWNTOWN!! The rules definitely are written in blood.
This story reminded me of a research paper I read last year on a link discovered between childhood leukaemia and petroleum vapours from filling stations. I'm not sure it has had the exposure it should have. [Residential proximity to petrol stations and risk of childhood leukemia 2023]
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@PracticalEngineeringChannel Unsure if anyone else has commented it, but the beard is looking nice on you bud
I also watch the US Chemical Safety Board (USCSB) videos, so this video is right up my alley.
One thing that I do wish you had covered was that many rural homes are still offered gas contracts as part of wells drilled on their land and in many cases these connections are not odorized (which was a contributing factor in several natural gas home explosions in my area over the years). Similarly a few years ago, it became legal to ship non-odorized liquefied natural gas by rail.
You make Civil Engineering understandable and very interesting, not an easy task. Well done.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10504204/
"Generally, three chemical classes of organosulfur compounds are used in the natural gas industry in North America: alkyl mercaptans such as t-butyl mercaptan (TBM) defined by a terminating S-H (thiol) group; alkyl sulfides or thioethers such as dimethyl sulfide (DMS) defined by a dual-linked sulfur atom; and cyclic odorants such as tetrahydrothiophene (THT) that have a sulfur atom linked within a saturated CH ring structure.
Unlike the E.U., U.S. federal odorization laws do not list specific compounds or concentrations that must be used; therefore, odorant use within the U.S. has generally been regarded as proprietary. The proprietary nature of chemical odorization introduces uncertainty surrounding which odorants are used and at what concentrations. This is particularly the case for the compounds methyl mercaptan (MM) and ethyl mercaptan (EM) based on conflicting evidence of reported use. Ortiz [8] notes that methyl mercaptan is not used as a natural gas odorant due to its low molecular weight and high reactivity. This claim is supported by other publications including reports from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the American Chemistry Council (ACC), where methyl mercaptan is explicitly considered to not be acceptable for use as a natural gas odorant [16-18]. These claims, both from industry and government sources alike, contradict similar documentation from the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and other sources affirming methyl mercaptan use in U.S. natural gas systems [19-22••]."
As kids we played darts in the cellar and put the board on a silver pipe, some darts hit the pipe and stuck. As kids (pre school) we had a great laugh and moved on. About an hour later, my bigger brother came home and he smelled gas. He called the gas provider but was told "you can´t smell gas, it has no smell". So we stayed in the house. When my mum came home later, the gas smell was everywhere and she immediately called everyone out and we went to the neighbors to call the fire station (back in the 80th, pre mobile phones ;))
The result was that the whole street had to be evacuated, luckily nothing happened, but the fireman told us even a light switch could have started an explosion.
And he told us that the guy at the gas company was technically right, you can´t smell gas and that's why they put something in it so you can.
I hope a gas company today would react differently, even when a kid called.
It sounds like they didn't train their employees very well in the 80s
@@jwalster9412 I'm imagining some pendant wasn't able to make the -leap in logic- logical deduction that they were smelling someting;
As a result of -{hypoxia: gas-supply or exhaust leak, intoxication: cough syrup, or chronic fatigue}- some common 'temporary' impairment;
And had the next reply been "Then [we] are smelling _the odorizer_ added to the gas!" they would have awakened enough to provide a useful response.
But yeah; people did tend to be actively-unhelpful/hostile to children on the phone into the 90's.
"He called the gas provider but was told "you can´t smell gas, it has no smell"."
That sounds extremely puzzling since you'd expect them to odorize their gas. I can think of 3 options what that could mean:
1) The gas from that provider actually wasn't odorized. (Yikes!)
2) The gas *was* odorized but at least this employee wasn't aware of even such a basic fact of their business.
3) The employee *did* know that the gas was odorized but deliberately provided false information.
The option 1 would be the worst one of these.
@@seneca983 Arguably, option 3 is actually worse, as it would elevate any incident from "operational incompetence" to "intentional malice and trying to get a customer killed".
@@WackoMcGoose Yeah but option 1 is basically that but to their entire client base.
Many years ago, the chemistry dept. at the London college I worked at made the mercaptan odorizer and it somehow got flushed down the drain, causing a major incident and evacuation of several surrounding buildings.
Had something similar happen to me during my time in Uni. Me and a colleague were merrily clicking away on our tables and results in a side wing of the university just over our lab. Then a horrid horrid smell chocked us. Something similar to garlic and mercaptan used in CNG, but many times stronger. We had to flee our office in a rush. Only after a day a lab technitian from the neighboring "fuel and oils" department confessed she had some "minor" glitch in the experiment she was running on some new mercaptan .
Stink bomb
I know a similar incident in Sweden maybe 10-15 years ago. I think it was THT, an extremely powerful odorant used for gas that was spilled in pure form in the sewer.
lmfao that sucks
Was the evacuation because of the stink or from fear of a gas leakage ;
My mother, born in 1924, was always afraid of gas. One time I asked her why, and she told me about a friend who was killed trying to light her gas oven, not knowing that there was a gas build-up. I asked her how she could have possibly missed the smell of the gas, and that's when my mother told me that they add the smell now, and gas had no smell at the time. Aligns perfectly with your video!
Safety rules are often "written in blood".
sad but true
Especially in aviation.
Hollywood
Better than not doing anything at all after it happens
Safety rules are not written to protect the employee, they came into existence to protect the employer from the law. Making the employee safer is just a side effect.
I’ve been to the New London School Explosion museum twice, I live not far from there. When I was a kid my grandparents told me stories of classmates they lost in the explosion. They didn’t know each other at the time, but neither one of them was at school that day because they had to help their famlies on their respective farms. My great grandfathers were part of the crowd that went down to help with the rescue and recovery efforts. In the New London School Explosion museum, there is a Western Union condolence telegram from one A. Hitler, at that time the Chancellor of Germany. It’s so strange to see that knowing what was to unfold just a few years later.
I've been to that museum and seen that letter, and agree that it's chilling to read, given the context of history. If I recall correctly, there's one from J. Stalin as well.
Grew up in Rusk County. This tragedy is not nearly as known as it should be
It is said that, initially at least, Mr Hitler was voted in to power, in a democratic election, (a cautionary tale there, for voters in all elections). Some sources say he did "some" good things in his earlier days, like he upgraded Germany's motorways. I've also heard reports that in order to "work harder for longer" he was taking some form of amphetamines or "uppers" for a long time. Whether these badly affected his entire personality later on in his life, we could never be sure.
Graduated from Jacksonville, went there a couple times too. Weird how much this and Waco, also not very far away, changed my perception of the world
Yes! So crazy that Hitler sent the telegraph! Nobody knew he was crazy yet.
My grandpa and his brother were there and my grandpa was buried. (AJ Thompson and Joe Thompson- in the event your family knew them. I guess most of the victims and contemporaries are gone now though. Interesting stuff.
Funny how a salesman was considered qualified to inspect a gas pipe installation, when today I don't trust a salesman to even sell me anything.
Well, back then, the salesmen knew everything about what they were selling.
@@Apollo-Computersno. Sure they might have had more knowledge but it’s just because back then people didn’t give a sh*t. Like we’ve made advances and have more regulations. That’s the real reason.
Also, that’s supported by the literal previous sentence where a janitor and a random plumber installed the line. Like??? Bruv
@@Apollo-Computers Back when (almost) no one could check, if what the salesmen claimed was actually true.
@@Apollo-Computers there were just as many cheats and scams back then. they were just smaller because they can use instagram or IPOs to reach 10M people today
Were people just really trusting back then? if I heard "I'm a radiator salesman", my thoughts are
"I don't want your product. Even if I did, I know what you're offering is going to be low end garbage. You are only slightly above an actual con artist in my eyes."
Not
"I bet this guy can inspect gas pipes."
Recently, (within the last 2 years) the NTSB released a report about another gas explosion in Texas, with the frightening finding that the local clay soil had stripped the odorant from gas entering the soil from a leaking gas main. I bought a methane detector for my home after learning that.
Natural gas detectors are definitely a good choice to have. The common mentality that they aren't necessary due to the odorant can fail in a number of ways.
I do gas leak inspections for the local gas utility. I've had numerous times where I'll enter a house and immediately smell gas with my on person detector screaming at me. Will alert the homeowner to it and they will say they don't smell a thing. It's easy to become nose blind to the mercaptan especially if the leak is small and the gas concentration builds up over time.
The detectors are so cheap now so not really any reason not to just have a few installed around the home.
@@RaLiChu”olfactory fatigue” is indeed a very real thing. Not just with methyl mercaptan in methane but also h2s and plenty of other toxic and flammable gases.
In my opinion gas detectors should be mandatory to install, they are pretty unexpensive too and work great.
At home I have installed a detector that in case of a leak shuts the main gas line with a solenoid operated valve.
@@stephenviggiano1610 It's not just a problem with noses. Most commonly available detectors suffer from the same issue during prolonged exposure - meaning that just because the alarm has stopped sounding doesn't mean things are safe yet
@@miscbits6399 true. Almost all combustible/flammable gases are toxic as well, with very few exceptions. Our method of protection is a standard wheatstone bridge catalytic sensor and we operate with a standard turnback at 10% LEL.
"It's not hard to become accustomed to risk, especially when lots of people are doing the same thing and the benefit is so immediate and obvious."
Cars
@@AdamEspinosa Yup, maybe 90% of the kids in my high school didn't wear seatbelts, and this was in 2009-2012! Senior year I got roped into driving classmates on a field trip, and they were _pissed_ I made them buckle up, lol!
Fossil fuels. They all cause asthma and heart disease when burned but they do it over the course of decades so no one notices or cares (unless you're an unlucky child who gets asthma early)
COVID 19
The technical name for this effect is "normalization of deviance"
It's nice to see that normal Grady and evil mirror universe Grady both like infrastructure.
The hard question is which one is which. Everyone forgets bearded Spock was the one who saved Kirk.
When I saw him I thought he was going to say "this is impractical engineering"
His voice is slightly deeper as well?
Gredy
@@wta1518Groovy Cavehouse
I bought a house that had an old natural gas refrigerator in the basement. The gas company came to inspect the house, and red-tagged it. I asked the inspector what the limit was for allowable gas concentration, and he replied "Zero". I guess I have to agree.
It was tagged out because of the refrigerant (ammonia ) used in the gas refrigerator. The gas company should’ve given you a card about free disposal and a $50 reward for turning it in.
@@boby115 Gas man didn't offer me $50, but I sold the thing to a guy with a drafty deer camp cabin for $100, so all is good.
Servell ?
@@boby115 I got $100 for a Servel after the ammonia leaked out. I only had to mail the tags somewhere.
@@maplebones Yes.
I used to work at Mother Frances Hospital in Tyler, TX where the injured were taken. The hospital’s proud history of opening early due to tragedy is told to all employees even today.
Thank you for the explanation of how this happened.
Was a bit confused by this so I looked it up - for those who don't know, the hospital was brand new and due to be officially opened the next day. That ceremony was cancelled, obviously. How fortunate it was ready, although tragic in timing.
In Madill, Oklahoma, in the late 1960s, when I was young, my mother worked with the sweetest lady. She seemed elderly to me. I still remember her sadness as she recounted the story of that day. Her only son died in that disaster. It haunted her all the days of her life. Thank you for analyzing it.
I used to work for a chemical testing lab. The kind of place that gets the data to go on Safety Data Sheets, to say what damage would be caused if stuff is spilled into the environment. We once had to test a mercaptan. The smell of it pure is so overwhelming, horrifically, bad, and persistent. You're talking forced air fed RPE when weighing it out, until it was diluted down and having to bleach everything afterwards to remove the smell. Treat again afterwards to remove the bleach residue. One of the worst lab tasks we ever had. 🤢
I once worked in a warehouse where 55 gal. drums of ethyl mercaptan were stored. Even though we never opened these drums, and never had a spill, you could smell the stuff if you were anywhere close to the drums. I'm not sure whether this was due to traces of vapor seeping through the threads of the bungs, or from residue on the outside of the drums from spillage or splash when the drums were filled.
Did it pass the test? 😁
@@cannotbeleftblank6027 SDS isn't a pass/fail test. It's a "what is this and how will it hurt you" test.
Same thing with a skunk spray! 🦨🦨🦨🦨🦨
@@russlehman2070They use butyl mercaptan as for odorizing LPG (liquified petroleum gas).
"Excitement and hope permeated the crowds gathered in a dusty farm carved from the piney woods in east Texas." I never noticed Grady's terrific writing before; and then I noticed the seamless graphics. The story-telling on this channel is exceptional.
In a cemetery near where I grew up in Louisiana, there is the grave of a little boy whose gravestone said that he was killed in the New London school explosion. Thanks, Grady, for the excellent report.
It's unfortunate that tragedy is often required for changes to be made. My grandfather was killed servicing a gas line prior to the additive's use. I am glad it now helps protect others.
Natural gas in China still has no odorant, at least in my in laws apartment, and given that it's a 12 story building, that fact sure keeps me up at night when I stay there.
I wonder if it has to do with the fact that China imports the majority of its natural gas, a lot of it via LNG tankers as well. You'd think it wouldn't be that hard to odorize it at the unloading terminal tho or wherever it's evaporated and added into the supply...
This is the one where you see the thumbnail, get shocked, read the title, then instantly think “oh ok it makes sense”
Came back to upvote. You are totally right
Yeah that's how it works....
@@asbjoget a grip
I saw the thumbnail and was like "ohh yeah, I remember that one
exactly
It's always a good day when you put out a video! Your older video on MSE walls was what made me realize I wanted to be civil engineer. It's been 8 years since it then, but I'm finally able to go to university full time and start my engineering courses. Thank you for all the content you put out! Truly an inspiration
My friend Felix had anosmia (loss of sense of smell) from a head injury. She made herself a note to remind herself to check her stove and water heater occasionally to make sure they were functioning properly.
Once when I visited her the place reeked of gas - she'd accidentally left her stove on without lighting it overnight - scared the hell out of me and her both!
Her place wasn't well insulated, so just leaving a burner on probably couldn't have exploded the place, but....
I think they make detectors for gas leaks, I'd recommend your friend get one.
@@scottthewaterwarrior Yes they do, and yes she should. They're a bit pricey, but it's worth it to save her life! Gas is surprisingly safe, but only if you know when there is a leak.
My father's family lived in a 2nd story flat in an inner city tenement in the 1920's . He often told the story of when he and his 10 YO brother were sitting on their balcony and the 3 story tenement across the street blew up and came down into a pile of rubble right in front of them. Neither of them were hurt but it's something they never forgot.
As an ASME code inspector I worked in that part of East Texas, Longview specifically. One of the companies that I inspected for fabricated and tested a version of the oderizers you refer to in the video. I have certified dozens of those over my time there in East Texas. All of the old hands at that company have a deep memory of the New London story.
I’m glad to see this topic covered so well. My wife published a book about the New London disaster, “New London School: In Memoriam, March 18, 1937, 3:17 P.M.”. She even had lunch with Walter Cronkite after publishing! That said, it is a truly heartbreaking story that influenced the petroleum industry to this day.
Thanks for your fine coverage.
I grew up in Bowie MD, The soil was found to strip the smell added to to make Natural gas smell. After a Few houses blew up, the gas company had to go around and fix all of the leaks along the gas distribution lines
I didn't expect to see a wild Bowie MD in the comments. I've lived here my whole life and I've never heard of this.
Had a contract job in Colorado tracing really old natural gas lines that supplied gas for free from the oil fields to residents at the time. The oil gave out ages ago but the gas kept flowing.
For safety the State had required anyone who had these in their home to let them know so they get them safely shut-in. However, many folks were more worried about losing the free gas than suffocating or having their homes detonate.
Fast forward to the early 2000’s and even with homes catching fire and blowing up, and people being hospitalized, as the corroded pipes were rapidly giving out, they STILL didn’t want to admit they had it in their homes, even when the old maps showed it was, my FID/PID was screaming danger, and there was a clear line of dead grass above what could only be a badly leaking gas line leading directly into their home.
Many even got in our face as we were using ground penetrating radar and gas detection gear on the streets and fields to map all these lines for later closure work.
Most common complaint was that everything was fine because, since there wasn’t a smell, there wasn’t any leaks… 🙄
Hi Grady, I believe I first learned about the New London explosion on Modern Marvels: Engineering Disasters maybe 20 years ago, and I periodically read about it. I have to say I actually learned a bit of new information, and found this better produced and less sensationalized than the Modern Marvels segment. In a world of "content" that's little more than reading a Wikipedia entry, videos like this are refreshing.
I think most of us will agree that a Grady video is more trustworthy than either Wikipedia or many History Channel shows.
In The Netherlands they add tetrahydrothiophene to natural gas instead of ethanethiol. Makes it easier to distinguish between sewer smell and a gas leak.
Great video! My understanding from my time as a volunteer firefighter is that the odorant is only added at the relatively low-pressure local stage of the gas distribution system. Gas in long-distance pipelines and gas used by large industrial customers who get gas at long-distance pipeline pressure does not have the odorant.
In 2 different places I've lived I smelled natural gas leaks. In the first place the people responsible came, found the leak (it was the meter) and fixed it. Second place guy came, said it was our cat litter, We waited 2 days, called again, new guy came out, he said our line outside was leaking and gave us very explicit instructionbs to tell the person who had to fix it. Good man.
Yikes. I work in electrical related industries both as a job and hobby, and it's very apparent how designs, regulations, and standards have changed over the years. A co-worker and I often joke about how safety was a recent invention, seemingly obvious things like live chassis radios and TVs containing glowing vacuum tubes in wooden boxes with an unpolarized power cord were just the norm back then, and no doubt we've learned the hard way why that's not a great idea either. Though not something you *should* rely on as a safety device, the GFCI has likely saved countless lives from electrocution too.
There is an electronics channel I watched off and on where the guy repaired old radios and he did mention that often times the metal chassis that all the tubes and stuff were affixed often served as the neutral for the AC side of the circuit. Meaning if the non polarized plug was plugged in the other way the metal could become energized as it was now connected to the hot. He would bring this up because its something to watch for when testing vintage electronics outside their wood or bakelite enclosure. Might also explain the point also being made to use an isolation transformer.
Sorry, but I have never understood the point of polarized AC electronics and European sockets are unpolarized anyway. Could you please explain?
@@Loanshark753 Even though there's 120V or 240V or whatever between live and neutral, the neutral side is supposed to have no voltage between it and ground. Ground is connected to... the ground. Earth. Pipework, exposed metal, ect is all connected to this "ground" so that the end user will never come in contact with two things with a voltage other than 0 volts between them. This is why modern appliances have a ground connection. If a fault happens inside the appliance, the grounded metalwork that the end user is exposed to *can't* become anything other than 0V, and the internal fault will trip your circuit breaker.
However, this wasn't always the case. Earlier electronics such as TVs and radios often were "hot chassis" meaning one of the two wires going into it was connected DIRECTLY to the metalwork inside. With an unpolarized plug, that's a 50/50 chance of making everything inside that device 120V or 240V above ground potential, meaning if you were touching a radiator, damp concrete, ect and also came into contact with something in that device, it could be fatal.
Some appliances even had exposed metalwork connected directly to an unpolarized cord, which is seriously dangerous.
As for modern things, even ungrounded stuff often can benefit from being polarized. The fuse, power switch, ect is often only on one wire, and with polarized stuff it'd be on the live wire so that nothing inside is "live" when the fuse is blown or switch is off. With an unpolarized device, the fuse or switch might be on the neutral side, which means that the stuff inside *could* still be energized at mains voltage when turned off, such as a toaster's heating elements.
I hope my 4AM ramblings made sense :)
@@Loanshark753i suspect the reson older gear had the chance of wiring up a chassis to 110v and other bits of danger is that the designers had the “ if you open this up, you better know what you’re doing “ mindset. Your safety is not our responsibility it’s yours.
I worked for my local gas company, and got to tour the peak shaving plant where they had the mercaptan drip for odorization.
I got a call from a building I was going to close down later on.
"We smell gas. What do we do?"
I called a senior gas engineer and he got an engineer with a sampling machine. When I was going round I thought, that's not gas out of a pipe, that's gas out of a person.
I went straight to the inlet and turned it off. Pushed the emergency exist open and discovered that the small people in peril had all been taken away.
The smell was still there and so were both the gas people. It was NOT the gas from the supply.
So I thanked them and got a friendly grilling from the senior man.
Personally I think the smell was drifting on the wind from the school with about 650 little children.
@@20chocsaday I have no idea what your story is Saying
@@20chocsaday What the hell are you saying? It makes no sense at all.
@@20chocsadaybringing schizoposting BACK
So of the toddlers there are still learning to read.
Kind of wild to see so many people investigating a likely gas explosion, lit cigarette in hand.
My grandfather, AJ Thompson, was in the building (5th grade) when this happened. He was buried alive for several hours. His little brother, Joe Thompson, was in the other part of the building in 3rd grade. He ran home to alert their mother, Ruth Goss Thompson who was home with 3 younger sons. This incident forced local Mother Francis Hospital to open its doors before it was completed. My grandpa, AJ, always feared being underground in any way despite being a boxer in the Navy. He took me to Carlsbad Cavern in 1983 because he thought I should see it. I had never seen him nervous in my life before that. But he did it.
The home I grew up in, in Houston was built by Columbus Joiner and given to his daughter Ola Bell in 1947 as a wedding present.
"Dad" Joiner was really quite the character.
The Daisy Bradford #3 was drilled in the location that Ms. Bradford chose as the first two wells on her property were dry holes.
Joiner was about to give up and move on. However Daisy Bradford had an agreement with Joiner and told him he was NOT going to
quit until he had drilled the 3rd hole which they had agreed to.
Ms. Bradford told Joiner where to drill. Where her chicken coop stood.
I had this story told to me by Ola Bell Joiner Brister many times. Her son, John was my closest friend.
The house still stands in Houston.
We replaced and rerouted gas pipes in our house a couple of years ago. Old steel pipes were cut up and stored outside, while new ones were installed. Everything went fine, welding was good and no leaks were detected by two independent methods of measuring. The interesting thing is, that the Methanethiol that is being added as an odorant accumulated over the years on the inside wall of the gas pipes. The old pipes, cut to pieces and lying outside, were a source of that familiar "gas smell" every time I went near to them. They did smell for several days. It was strange. Some of the old pipes were later used as reinforcement for a concrete retaining wall that we build between the house and the garden, together with rebar.
The city of Rouen, France, I have left 5 years ago got an industrial catastrophe at Lubrizol company plant (11 years then 4 years ago), where tons of Mercaptan was released in the atmosphere. The smell was so strong that I cause hundreds of calls to the fire department… hundreds kilometers from the source ! The smell was even noticeable from Great Britain.
Hey i was studying in Rouen during the 2nd lubrizol accident... Mont-Saint-Aignan, la fac
Students made lots of funny memes about Lubrizol and the way the prefet assessed the situation.
Ravie de voir d'autres Rouennais par ici !
My grandpa was actually a student at the time at this school and missed school as he was sick.
I went to New London school, and grew up exactly 2 miles from the discovery well.
If you're ever in the area be sure to stop at the London Tea Room and museum.
Sadly a lot of people assume laws, rules & standards (even entire government agencies!) exist "for no good reason". Or worse, were set up only to control people, or whatever. Videos like this are a public service. Thanks Grady!
true, but sometimes some regulations seam very outdated by new regulations. Still I do believe some of those outdated once are better kept than removed and wrongly acted upon
I have a family member who thinks drivers licenses are unconstitutional and kids should be allowed to drive
I recently saw the play "The Girl in the White Pinafore" which is a stage production based on this event. It was haunting.
I love when you do videos on disasters. I love learning about this stuff, but so many channels that focus on tragedies like this are either ill informed, overdramatic, or these days just straight up AI written, voiced and images. Thanks for keeping it real.
In Oz when I was younger, we used to call the odorant "skunk juice." I recall going through lectures before starting my shift doing security at the Boral plant in St. Peters, Sydney - the day after a tank (26,000 gallon) of Liquefied Natural Gas exploded in 1990, setting fire to a further 3 tanks. It was fascinating to see indications showing the intensity of the fires, with one truck in virtually pristine condition on the side away from the fire, but an unpainted, rusted hulk with metal bands where the tyres should have been, and traces of glass down the door where the window had melted, on the other side. You'd better believe we were all sniffing for trace odors when we walked around the plant that day.
Something similar but on much smaller scale happened to my fathers competitor in rural northern Michigan. My father worked in HVAC and his competitor was hired to work on someones gas furnace in their summer home. (I don't know if it was natural gas or propane. ) he was working on the regulator and trying to light the furnace and the house blew up, completely leveled the place. Sadly he past on in the explosion. After investigating it was found that the gas supply was unscented and he didn't realize he was accidently pumping the place full of gas.
Minor point, Tyler is west of New London. Good episode, Sir. As an East Texas native, we all grew up with this story and that of the Grandcamp as part of our local history of industrial accidents.
Eighteen sticks of Dynamite were stored in the auditorium. WHAT? Even though that had no part in the explosion, who thought that was a good idea?
Dynamite is extremely stable and safe.
@@lobsterbark It doesn't matter, you simply do not store it in a school, end of discussion.
@@skunkjobb Why not?
Gotta store it somewhere
jeeze louise, man. who died and made you king?
I was working in gas transportation company and was instructed and shown how odorant is added to gas in pipe. Odorant is always added just before pumping it to city or town pipes. Gas between transportation facilities has no odorant in it. I believe this can vary from country to country. I was amazed by the amount of odor substance within gas, it was added by small drops which weight is 0.02 gram. Standard amount was 16 grams per 1000 cubic meters of gas. Overall, working on such facility was an interesting experience.
My husband’s grandmother attended this school. She didn’t go that day-her mother kept her home because she had been having severe headaches. We never knew-she didn’t talk about it, and we only found out when her sister gave her eulogy. Thank you for this video-it helps us understand what she and her classmates endured that day.
Wonder if the gas leak caused her headaches.
Back in college, I was a biochem major. Kodak had a mercaptan for odorless gases. I was name branded, "Le Stink".
Maybe you should make a new series out of engineering disasters that were so catastrophic that they inform modern engineering best practices. You can call it "Impractical Engineering".
We have the saying" behind every rule is at least one dead."
This is such a sad story😢
I'm sure there are also some rules that are due to only near-mishaps or even just pure foresight.
We?
@@seneca983 There are also rules with nothing but beaucracy behind them.
Prop 65 comes to mind.
@@seneca983 There definitely are some of those, but not the majority for sure
I remember many years ago - roughly 1990 - I was walking home from school and was almost home when I heard a strange noise. It had rained during the day, and one of the puddles right near my house had bubbles popping at the surface. I didn't smell anything, but I knew that puddle was very close to the gas line running down the street.
Boston Gas came out with their sniffer truck, determined the leak was isolated, and replaced about 30 feet of gas pipe that night. The entire neighborhood had been scheduled for replacement in about 18 months, but that was accelerated because of the leak. They also moved any gas meters that were inside our houses to the outside.
I know some people just cannot smell the ethyl mercaptan, but I can. I never did find out why I couldn't smell it that day.
Maybe it has to do with it bubbling up through water. The water could act as a filter, like in a smoking pipe. I'm not sure if methyl mercaptan is water soluble, but that could be it.
I've read a few comments here saying that various soil compositions can strip the mercaptan from the gas, so maybe that's what was happening
When a customer at Home Depot asks why I can't advise them on a plumbing project (legally we cannot quote plumbing _or_ electrical code unless licensed), I'm just gonna cite this video as why.
(for the same question in _electrical_ department, i just gesture vaguely to ElectroBOOM's entire channel)
It amazes me how well the odorizer works even if you had never smelled it before you instantly know it's something ominous
Another great video! I'm going into my 29th year teaching high school engineering and love to use your videos in class. This video works well for engineering as a trade, engineering ethics, and schools in general; all while being short, to the point, and interesting for kids to follow along. Great job Grady!
A chemistry teacher of mine worked at a gas plant where someone dropped a container of the odouriser chemical - immediate shower and change of clothes but on the bus home everyone got of the stop after they got on!
In the times of "town gas" made from roasting coal, the resulting gas was more often than not pretty bad smelling apparently (I'm too young to have experienced piped town gas, only ever the school test tube experiments), due to the sulphurous content of the coal leaving gaseous sulphur compounds in the the gas, so if you smelled rotten eggs (and you didn't have digestive troubles!), you very likely had a leak somewhere...
I *am* old enough to remember :-) The old 'town gas' made from coal, smelt very similar to the oderised natural gas - a guy came round and adjusted our gas hob etc, and explained that it had been oderised to smell the same as the old stuff.
1:51 To quote Explosions & Fire: Gas generation in a sealed container? That's a bomb!
I worked on Stanlow oil refinery near Ellesmere Port on the river Mersey, where they had a plant which made "stench" which was a gas used to odourise north sea gas.
I went to school in New London, graduated in ‘99, it’s crazy how many years have passed and I haven’t really thought about this in so long and now I see a video about. Pretty spot on from what I remember.
I’ve lived in Tyler for over 40 years. The New London disaster is still noted every year.
In the boom days of the East Texas Oil Field, things were a bit like the Wild West. Tiny (or nonexistent) communities became boom towns, bursting with population influx and oil money while mired in mud streets-a little like the stories of Gold Rush towns in California. Kilgore became home to the World’s Richest Acre. Longview became an oil industry town and Tyler became the banking town, civic personalities that still persist to a certain degree today. But the little communities just sprang up in chaos, so it’s not surprising that New London mightn’t have utilized best practices in fueling the new school. Lots of new money to build a modern school, yes, but not the mindset to do everything professionally.
I remember a documentary or history I saw/read decades ago that said the officials chose to use producer gas or casinghead gas for the school. In details, it wasn’t quite the same story as Grady reports, but the desire to heat for free underlies both. I imagine the older history was simplified in detail.
It makes one pause to drive by the New London monument today.
The East Texas Oil Museum on the campus of Kilgore College is a neat place to learn about this part of history. Visiting their "street scene" is a source of fond memories from my youth.
I grew up near New London, and my great-grandmother attended that school. She moved away literally the day before the explosion happened. It's wild to think about how fortunate I am to even be here.
As a young adult I had been tasked with cleaning out the chemical cabinet at work. I was well trained in pH neutralization, but did not know much of chemicals and potential reactions with the different weak acids and bases I was using to neutralize these chemicals with.
The supervisor came and reviewed the different chemical compounds and removed 3 of them stating that it would be dangerous to have me take care of those at the time.
But, he missed a small bottle with a written paper label from the university. The label had a molecule drawn out on it and said Mercaptain.
All of my neutralizing was done inside a fumehood so that gases produced did not gather inside. So when I slowly added this bottle into the solution it was being mixed with, all of the vapor was sucked up by the powerful suction.
About 30 minutes later, crews were frantically inspecting everything in the area. They smelled the natural gas leak and it was extremely potent, having dumped about 20 cc of this into a pail that I could not smell.
The inspectors were incredibly confused as they followed the scent of the mercaptain but their sensors showed no trace of natural gas.
The supervisor ran back to where I had been working with diluting chemicals and picked up the bottle and shook his head that he had missed seeing the tiny bottle when he reviewed.
I'm not sure what the repercussions were for us as a company. I know that it was not taken lightly and additional steps were added to our process where each chemical being disposed of had to be individually marked for disposal by the supervisor.
I live in New London - less than four miles from the location of the explosion. The current school was partially built with materials from the original school, and there is a memorial nearby we simply call the 'Cenotaph,' which means 'empty tomb' in Greek (since no one killed in the explosion was buried on site). There is a cemetery nearby that has scores of children who died that day, and it's sad to see so many kids who had their lives cut so short. As a kid in the 70s, I knew of several people nearby who were in or near the explosion that day, but being that it's now been 85+ years, I doubt anyone of them are still living.
This whole thing is jaw dropping, from Walter Cronkite saying later that no story equaled it, to the way the officials wrote the official report.
Next time someone says we don't need zoning boards and permitting procedures, show them this. Safety rules were written in blood.
Years ago, my husband lost an aunt due to gas leak in her home that killed her while she slept. She was just 15. I live only about 100 miles from New London Texas and yet never heard this story. So tragic about this school. This eastern area of Texas is actually still low population, no really big cities, and each town is separated by many miles. Most people struggle for basics. I can understand how this horror happened. I don't think anyone could have dreamed it would happen.
First thanks for the video, it was enjoyable and informative.
While I'm not sure many people will see this. If you are in a home that has natural gas, I urge you to buy and install a natural gas detector, and if you already have one test it to make sure it works. I was one the receiving end of a natural gas explosion back in 2005. Even with the added smell things can still cause it to be undetectable. In my case the break in the pipe was in the front yard and not in the house. So when it did finally make it's way over to the house the added chemical was filtered out by the ground. It's not something that happens often, but still it is better safe than sorry.
Recently a customer of mine was called to an abandoned schoolbuilding we help him develop.
It was abandoned pending wrangling the bureaucrats, eco-protestors and other obstructionists and had been for years. It was often vandalised. The gas is still on there to power a single small boiler to keep frost out of the basement and frost damage from pipes.
One set of vandals, gypsies, had broken their way inside the basement, then taken apart several gas pipes and the boiler, using unscrewing. Police saw a man carry a grinder inside and went after him. They arrested the man right as he was about to enter the basement, which reeked strongly of gas.
There were markings on the gas main pipe: Those genius gypsies were about to take a grinder to a gas mains pipe, in the middle of a gas-filled room.
If they'd gone ahead that would've ended the discussion of renovation vs demolition of the building in about 0.1 seconds. 😆
Thanks for another interesting video.
Also, beard looks good.
Thanks Grady, we love ya
Grady, gave you visited the New London, TX Museum? Truly an inspirational tour. The docents are absolutely amazing to listen to. I'm fortunate to live about a mile from the DB#3. A beautiful area of Texas.
3:58 Oh well, from today's point of view, that's huge mistake right at the first step. Bus driver, local welder and salesman installing and inspecting it. yike
I'd trust the drivers (1930's, you would expect them to be pretty handy), janitors, n welder to do their best. But a salesman as a safety inspector is bone chilling.
Crazy times when you could just drill into a pipe n huzzah, free gas! That said, the oven at a previous house was plumbed in using garden hose and jubilee clamps, and it worked. But I made the landlord pony up quite a bit to actually get it re-done properly. TBH, if I could get free gas like that, I probably would, but id put the Generator and boiler outside...
Thank you for covering this story. I am a VERY short drive from the town and the story of the New London school is essentially common knowledge in all of East Texas to this day. I actually have never seen the video footage before, that was fascinating. Here are some additional things to know as someone who has driven through New London and grew up near the town:
1. The school was rebuilt to honor the likeless of the original design as much as possible and has been preserved in memory of the tragedy.
2. Hitler sent a telegram offering his condolences after the event. His message read, "On the occasion of the terrible explosion at New London, Tex., which took so many young lives, I want to assure your excellency of my and the German people's sincere sympathy."
3. New London was a very promising town and was expected to grow into a large town in East Texas. Because the town's entire generation of youth was taken out in a moment, the town was never able to recover or grow and rapidly died off. It now has a population of 976 and consists of a few buildings in a heavily wooded rural area down a single tiny country road. It looks more like a community than a town. The most prominent building is the school, which elegant design stands out jarringly from the rest of the few small buildings around it. It really is one of those "blink and you miss it" towns. The only times I have been there was because it was the road I needed to take to reach a different location, there's really nothing there.
As an civil engineering intern it’s wild to think that anyone could claim to be an engineer, experienced or not. It makes me appreciate a bit more how thorough the laws and regulations are, knowing that we are standing on the shoulders of so many to come before us
I'd argue you're mostly standing on their mangled remains.
there is a reason why engineer is a protected title in germany, you cant just claim to be one.
Ten years ago, I was at work when I answered the phone. The woman on the other end asked for my boss. When I told her that he was not in the office, she matter-of-factly said that his house had just blown up!
Evidently, the roofers had driven a nail through the roof and punctured a gas line to the water heater. Happily, they went to lunch. The postal service letter carrier, walking the route, had just delivered mail and was in the walkway next door. He was blown off his feet by the explosion, but not injured. All the windows in the neighboring houses that faced the explosion were destroyed.
It is hard to believe that no one was injured or killed!
This house was 50+ years old and the gas line was run through the attic near the roof. Current building codes would not allow this.
I see Grady is growing out that beard ready for the next Harry's Razor Blades sponsorship ;)
Grady, I've been watching your channel here and on Nebula for years... Your historical recounts and investigative style videos are my absolute favorite. Please continue to do them!
96 individual connections to separate heaters instead of just one to a main boiler installed by the local bus drivers, a welder and janitor, what could possibly go wrong?
💥😂
A few weeks after we moved in we walked into our new house, and when my wife started shouting to evacuate immediately because of a gas leak, I learned I could no longer smell the additives. My physician thought it was a nasal infection, and suggested irrigating the area. That didn't help, and I gave up. 10 years later I was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, for which loss of smell ~10 years earlier is a common precursor. My physician did not know this.
Far too many people fail, or refuse to, understand that many of our rules are written in flesh & blood.
Flesh too? That would make for some lumpy text.
When I was very young my family and I had quickly evacuated our home because of the smell of gas., and I'm really struggling to come up with words to describe the melancholy and gratitude I feel in learning about what contributed to our safety on that day.
I was surprised that there was no need to change the burners in the individual radiators. When we changed gas supply around 1970 every appliance needed modified or replaced. But we were switching from coal gas to natural gas so the composition must have been different.
I wonder if that was because of pressure regulation.
Could be that's what the reported headaches &c. were - incorrect burner sizing causing an increase in carbon monoxide output. Although this residue gas ought to be fairly similar to pure natural gas, maybe there's not enough of a difference.
If you're ever out in East Texas near New London, the East Texas Oil Museum in Kilgore is super interesting! It doesn't look like much from the outside, just a big building on the local community college campus, but this was one of my favorite museum visits. Even my non-museum-loving wife enjoyed the trip! There is so much really good information about the early days of oil production in East Texas. Not just the technical and geological aspects, but the civil and the cultural impact as well.
The East Texas Oil Museum's "street scene" is source of fond memories from my youth, and is a really engaging way to display and contextualize the "pile of period ephemera" that most museums stack in display cases.
Lovin the beard!
I live above a bakery in Europe, and our heating system uses natural gas. One day, I smelled what seemed like natural gas in the closed bakery below and called the firefighters. They didn't find any gas leaks but agreed the smell was similar. They suggested it might be from the flour stockpiled in the bakery. I did some research and found that the smell of natural gas is due to added mercaptans, and interestingly, the Maillard reaction in bread also releases similar sulfur compounds like 2-furfurythiol and 2-methyl-3-furanthiol. So, it seems there is a link between the smells! Even though no bread was being baked that day, the flour might have caused the odor.
Sometimes I believe you can read my mind. We JUST covered the topic of "gas hazards" in a lesson at the local VFD.
Edit: Looking good - the beard suits you.
My wife’s great grandmother was a senior at New London that year, but-unbeknownst to her parents-was off campus at a typing competition that day. After the explosion, her parents went to the school to search for her, identified a body, and went home heartbroken. Later that afternoon, their daughter walked through the front door unharmed. She was one of only (I think) 4 survivors in the senior class, and later in life had a nervous breakdown due to the guilt she carried from having survived while so many friends and classmates had been killed.
Yeah, regulations are often seen as annoyances up until something happens and we get reminded of why they are a thing.
Years ago a tanker truck hauling the odour chemical had an accident just outside of my city . The amount of area that odour covered was incredible , basically the whole city!!
My garage always smells of natural gas. I have a high efficiency tankless water heater that regularly vents unburnt gas. It’s annoying because now I can’t smell if there is a leak. I have had the gas company plus others verify it’s fine. But it’s still a problem.
So I installed an explosion detector in my garage. If natural gas, or other fumes, build up to the point they could ignite then an alarm will go off. Hopefully the alarm doesn’t cause a spark 😂
That is NOT normal. I have never had any gas appliance smell like gas when it operates like normal.
You might have an issue with 'fall winds' entering your flue (idk the right translation) pushing combustion gases back into your house and causing abnormal combustion in general. A good water heater, even ones that are designed way back in the 1990s, have shut off systems for that.
@ecospider5 there is no situation where a NG appliance should “vent” gas into the living area. How is the water heater vented? Is it through a PVC pipe or a metal pipe? Have ALL the connections been checked for leaks? Could there be a leak from another location, but the water heater is just the most convenient explanation? You should never smell gas when an appliance works correctly.
@skoalsoldier
Yes it is a pvc pipe going through the ceiling and roof of the garage. The main smell is not the garage it is outside. But the smell comes back in through the soffit vents because the garage is not sealed.
So the burner turns off. Then the pressured exhaust fan ramps up and pushes the air out the pvc exhaust tube. Stopping any gas from collecting inside. I really don’t like the design. Even smelling that outside makes you less sensitive.
Being sensitive to that smell is really important.
Natural gas and LPG are great energy sources for industry and homes. Clean burning, consistent performance, no smell while being used (fuel oil smells sometimes especially when igniter gets old or the fuel delivery system gets dirty.
Such a hard story to hear.... But thankfully it brought change
Remember when lawmakers wrote laws to prevent future tragedies. Miss that
No?
I worked for almost 20yrs at a large gas utility in mass. 1 of my first major leak was on a 12in cast iron main. Going into houses you always cleared your CGI detector before going into houses and I did plus I have a great nose. When the street department arrived we were almost finished with our 300 foot investigation. They were barring holes and getting readings but there was no smell. I trusted my investigation but 2 other service tech's looked panicked after hearing no smell. I got put threw a cellar window and as I entered first floor the house alarm went off and immediately opened doors and we vented. The main was cracked and that was surprising for 12in cast iron. The main was encased in fine sand wich allowed it to scrub oderant out. Only time I ever seen that problem
It is heartbreaking that so many of our regulations have had to be implemented due to understanding following tragedy.
"Rules & regulations are written in flesh & blood"
And SCOTUS just hogtied OSHA...
@@SonsOfLorgar when even scotus sold out to corporations
You should definitely do a collaboration video with the channel Plainly Difficult (unless you have and I missed it). He covers various engineering and natural disasters (mine explosions, structure collapses, industrial accidents, etc).
I was working with a excavating crew a few years back.
We had a skid steer. That of course had the extremely loud backup beeper. I had been with them for a few months. An as someone who was raised on a farm. Knew that if a piece of Heavy equipment is being used. Stay out of the way. .
Or if you do have to work with it. Never walk in from behind of the equipment thats being used.
I make sure to make Eye contact with the operator before i walk in.
Well the backup beeper was about half as loud as usual. We had just hired a couple new guys a Father an son team. .
Made sure the rules was clear during our safety meeting that morning. An the skid steer was having a backup beeper problem.
We also wear Florescent Safety orange shirts. Or Florescent yellow.
We was working on dressing up a yard and playground area.
The skid steer was being used to place Pea gravel. The safety meeting that very morning had told us that the playground area is restricted an was not to be crossed on foot. Becausetgis very problem. We had a professional operator working the loader. He could dump an smooth out the gravel with the bucket. As good as 3 men could with a rake an shovel.
The skid steer come in through a tight spot to dump a load of gravels. An had to backup an reverse to get back out to a spot wide enough to spin it around.
The father had dropped a bag of black mulch into a draining ditch. That leads from the playground. He or nobody should even had been back there. An as he layed down on his belly to fish the bag back out. .
The skid steer was making its reverse to get back out.
An a terrible accident happened. The driver had looked into the backup camera as he was backing out. He turned his head to make sure his bucket was clearing the swings. An just like that we lost a worker before lunch. ..anyone who has ever worked with or drove a skid steer know how loud they are. This poor man had layed down right after the driver turned to look forward.
We have the biggest John deer skid steer that they had to offer. . An it run over his back an belly with one of the tracks.
He was able to mumble out to his son that he loved him before he passed away. An as i write this with tears dripping onto my phone. People don't realize how dangerous. Or how fast a accident happens.
That forever changes the people involved. A son lost his father. The operator quit that very day. An that is the saddest thing ive seen on a jobsite since i started an that was almost 2 years ago. I can still hear the scream of that boy. That lost the most important person in his life.
The whole town coming together to clear debris, overnight, in a rainstorm, and sift through it all looking for body parts---including those of children---is incredibly admirable. Humans are amazing, and can complete amazing feats when working together. 2000 tons cleared in 17 hours with little to no special equipment is nothing to sneeze at.
But I can't imagine being the parent of a child or children who passed away at New London School. Can you imagine if you had multiple children who all died there on that day? Or your only child?
Good on the beard bruv, looks great.
In medicine hat, AB, Canada.we gave away free gas to any business or factory that wanted it. Only thing was, you had to drill your own well. There was no question you would find gas, we're on top of a massive pocket. However today the result is, 400+ privately drilled "orphan" wells spread all around the city. From abandoned factories, to the well under the old hospital. Which was now located underneath a house across from the police station. Or another well, that started leaking in the spring of 2021 and by summer, it had closed down a road downtown and we had a service rig DOWNTOWN!! The rules definitely are written in blood.
"Jacks of all trades, and probably masters of none."
They make it sound like a bad thing! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@gus473for someone that installs gas pipelines that definitely is a bad thing.
@@gus473 it is a bad thing when they are to overconfident and don't get specialists
Grady was talking about me.
(Well, maybe. Jack of SOME
trades.)
steve
The real trick about being a jack of all trades is knowing when to call a master of the important ones.
I never expected a Practical Engineering video to make me cry. This is a horrible and tragic incident.
This story reminded me of a research paper I read last year on a link discovered between childhood leukaemia and petroleum vapours from filling stations. I'm not sure it has had the exposure it should have.
[Residential proximity to petrol stations and risk of childhood leukemia 2023]