Actually, if it's natural methane (natural gas), it's odorless. Sorry, took too many chemistry courses in college.

If I lived in that area, I'd leave the upper windows in all rooms open since methane rises.

[This message has been edited by Dennis (edited 01-18-2001).]

 

This is frickin' weird! Sinkholes keep popping up all over town, and spurts of gas/water shoot out. It is odorless because it's not processed through the gas companies, it's just gas in the ground coming up. The big one downtown is still going from yesterday. Almost all schools are now out or have been evacuated and cancelled for tomorrow. A large portion of town has been evacuated. Can't wait to get out of here today! (I live about 10 miles outside of the city).

Update: An underground gas storage well several miles outside of town apparently has been leaking and losing pressure. Plotting it out, this huge gas 'bubble' has followed a path along the water table and for some reason or another is venting out all over Hutchinson.

[This message has been edited by Flatlander (edited 01-18-2001).]

 

A...L...I...E...N...S..... ooooooohhhhhhhieeeooohhh

 

I don't know for sure what's going on here. An explosion yesterday morning destroyed several downtown businesses and are still on fire. I guess that natural gas wells in the ground are leaking up through the surface in widespread areas across the whole city. A mobile home just blew up a little bit ago and several people were injured, near a 'geyser' like leak that was spotted yesterday spewing up salt water. It's like there's just a bunch of big pilot lights everywhere. Madd Maxx here we come.
http://www.kwch.com/now/story/0,1597...9-388,00.shtml

 

it's there fault for naming the street "Chemical" LOL just kidding, hope everything is allright, and if you smell gas, turn out your lights and light as many candles as you can.

 

Be careful Flatlander - that sounds very scary. I sure hope they find out what's going on before someone gets hurt or killed. I've never heard of anything like this! Keep us posted.

------------------
Love my truck & PROUD of it! If you can't beat 'em, you're NOT driving a FORD!
Shovies PROVE that FORD'S are #1!!
'97 Black F150 XLT ORP 4X4
4.6L/auto/3.55 LS/power EVERYTHING,
nerf bars, 17" wheels, fog lights, trailer hitch w/electrical connector, front tow hooks, bed rail caps,
6 CD changer, lumbar support & 3 cow license plates - so far!

 

Well we made CNN last night, although they skewed the facts a bit. It's come to the conclusion that a storage cavern (full of high pressure liquid gas) is leaking and still pushing underground for several miles. The path is branching off and the gas is coming up through deep abandoned wells dug back in the 1800's. Unfortunately, the records kept at that time are not very good, so trying to find out where the next one pops up is nearly impossible. The trailer park that had the trailer blow up is located on top of some of these wells, which were not properly capped off. So the gas is finding the holes and shooting up gas/water (17 so far throughout the city), one resembling 'Old Faithful'. It's just about anybody's guess where the next one will vent, so obviously there is not yet a solution to stop this. The big one downtown is still burning which at least relieves some of the pressure. The Lt. Governor declared the city a state of disaster yesterday. Gratefully, nobody has died from any of this yet, although there is a seriously burned elderly couple.

 

Bottle that stuff and sell it!!! With natural gas prices as high as they are, the city should be able to make a nice profit!

Seriously- that has to be kind of scary!

 

That sounds crazy, I think I would take a little vacation away from home till this thing blows over.It makes the time my town made CNN seem like *not worthy*.Part of Interstate 5 is right along the South Umpqua River here.Anyway after a few days of normal rain, two lanes of the highway just decided to slide into the river.No warning, NO nothing.Luckily it was late at night and there was hardly any traffic.However, this hole in the freeway swallowed a semi(loaded with leather sofas) and one truck before traffic was rerouted.What is strange is I usually would have been driving on I-5 when that happened but(for some unknown reason) I decided to take the back roads home. When they were repairing the hole, they just buried the semi and pickup truck.What a waste of leather sofas!! Seriuosly though there was no cost effective way to get the vehicles out of the 400 ft deep hole. I hope they find away to fix the problem over there, befroe too many more people get hurt or killed.

 

Flatlander,
My wife's family lives in Hutchinson, Kansas. She was just telling me about the explosions. She is wondering what would happen if one of those pops up around one of those grain elevators. I bet a lot of people are giving up smoking. Stay Safe!!!

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Wendell
1997 F150 4.6L XLT Super Cab 4X4
ORP,Towing Package, 17" wheels, Bed Liner, Rear Sliding Glass, Tinted Windows....

 

Hey thanks guys for your concerns. It's sad that the elderly man did pass on in the hospital. I guess it blew his wife out of the home and he was trapped inside, and seriously burned. He used to stand outside one of the town's favorite Mex. Restaurants and play the accordian/saxophone for festive entertainment. Anyway, the big 'pilot' light downtown is still burning, and they believe they have found the source of the leak (on a side note, I think the gas co. knew of the leak and raised prices just to compensate for their loss, hoping there would be no problem, J/K!!). This is too hard to explain here, but today they were trying to cap off the well assumed to be the cause of the leak. That still leaves several miles of gas still under some pressure underground. Things have calmed down quite a bit though.

Wendell that's kinda funny having relatives here, still a small world huh? Actually, that was a concern, if one of those elevators filled up with gas it would really make a boom. The 'geyser' was w/in blocks of what I'm pretty sure is the world's largest grain elevators and the trailer park in which the explosion occured.
If anyone's really interested, www.hutchnews.com should have pretty accurate info.

 

This is one of those "You Saw (Read) It Here First" things. I didn't see anythig about this on the news until at least a day after I read it here.

 

Well I seen it on Fox news channel yesterday and then seen this. All I can say is be careful and be safe and hope everything gets back to normal soon.

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2000 F150 XLT Reg. cab
4.6 Triton Engine
4x2 3.55 rear end gear
sliding rear window
automatic keyless entry
white styleside short box

 

Yea, I just wanted to share it all with ya. Just one of those dramatic things that happen out of nowhere in the mid of nowhere. I did see earlier today or yesterday that there were reports of manhole covers shaking at a few spots around town. As you can see, it's almost midnight here and we're watching the news and not out-n-about. It's sad because they have not let several hundreds of people back into their homes, but luckily they have as much as possible support from the Red Cross and have some form of shelter. This apparently has no set solution yet, as they say they are waiting on a cap for the well that could only be found in Houston (TX), and should arrive in the morning. Whatever they've been trying to do is not working. I forgot, I had to kinda laugh when they said on the radio for no one to smoke in Hutch. There's a lot more fire hazards than that out there, but I guess it could be a quick iginition if you were standing/living on top of a well. Ok, goin' ta bed, see what happens tomorrow.

 

Well the lady that was in the home explosion died in the hospital a couple days ago, so two fatalities so far. They have began letting a few neighborhoods back into their homes, but there are many that will probably never be allowed back in. The gas company has quite a string of lawsuits to deal with. Wells have been dug all over town with hopes of finding gas and burning it off, some have hit large pockets. Town is in fear of contaminated water. At least many are pulling together with donations and free services to help those without their homes. There's a donation car show tomorrow, thinking about taking my lil brother's '68 Mustang up to display it.
Here's some pics from the sky:
The 'Pilot Light' downtown is still burning even today, which is where all the excitement started...


Here's the Kansas version of 'Old Faithful'...


This is the mobile home park near the geyser where the explosion occurred...


Anybody out of state got room for my wife and I and our two dogs? I'm ready to get the heck out of here j/k