Drilling Disasters
The Vanishing Louisiana Lake
In 1983, millions of people watched as a magician named David Copperfield gained worldwide fame by making the Statue of Liberty disappear, but three years earlier, a small crew of people were able to make an entire lake filled with 3.5 billion gallons of water completely vanish. Along with the lake, a loading dock, a tugboat, a house, a trailer, 11 barges, many trucks and tractors, botanical gardens, greenhouses, several trees, and part of an island also disappeared within a few short hours. Only a few people in Southern Louisiana, near New Iberia, witnessed this event, and it was not anywhere near as highly publicized as Copperfield’s television special.
So who were the people behind this amazing feat and how did they pull it off? Why is it than not many people know about it? The truth is that this event was not an illusion. It was just another costly drilling accident.
Early in the morning on November 20, 1980, a small crew of people working for Texaco were drilling for oil in Lake Peigneur in Louisiana. The crew was a little surprised when the drill seized at the relatively shallow depth of 1,250 feet. Usually, trying to get the drill stem loose at this depth would not have been a problem, but something was amiss. The harder they tried, the more it caused the entire drilling rig to tilt. There were a few “popping” sounds beneath the rig, and the bewildered crew watched as the 40-ton drill seemed jump up and down a few feet. The worried workers untied their barges from the oilrig, abandoned it and headed toward the shore as they watched the $5 million rig disappear into a lake that was only supposed to be 11 feet deep.
Meanwhile Junius Gaddison, the master electrician for the Diamond Crystal Salt Mine, was working at a depth of about 1,300 feet when he suddenly saw a muddy stream of water more than two-feet deep rushing toward him. He knew that something had gone terribly wrong and that everyone working in the mine was in immediate danger. Gaddison signaled the shift foreman and the lights of the mine soon flashed in a certain pattern that the workers all recognized as the signal to evacuate the mine as soon as possible. Fuel drums being carried by the rushing water were banging together loudly. From a distance, it sounded like a faint popping.
The Texaco rig had punctured the roof of the salt mine. The freshwater of the lake not only rushed into the mine, but it dissolved the pillars of salt that acted as the mine’s support. This caused the land above the mine, the floor of Lake Peigneur, to cave in. The mineshafts, some as wide as a four-lane highway and as tall as 80-feet, began to flood at an alarming rate, and the hole in the mine’s ceiling grew larger and larger.
Above the mine, Leonce Viatur Jr. and his nephew happened to be fishing in Lake Peigneur when they noticed a giant oilrig disappear into the lake. In its place, a whirlpool formed and kept growing until it was a quarter of a mile wide. It seemed like nothing could escape its force. Many acres of the popular tourist spot, Jefferson Island, including the trees, houses, vehicles and even the Rip Van Winkle Live Oak Gardens nature reserve were sucked into the maelstrom. The crews of several barges on the lake were abandoning their ships and jumping to shore as more and more boats seemed to disappear underneath the water. Many of those barges were not even in the lake to begin with, but since the lake water was draining into the salt mine, the boats in the canal that connected Lake Peigneur to the Gulf of Mexico were pulled in when the current suddenly changed direction. Even a tugboat running at full throttle was unable to escape the force of the whirlpool. A huge waterfall, the largest ever to exist in the state, formed where the canal met the lake and a fire raged on when a natural gas well located beneath the oilrig was ruptured.
The people working in the third level of the mine at 1,300 feet were easily able to evacuate, but most of the miners were one level below at 1,500 feet. A maintenance foreman named Randy LaSalle had to drive to remote areas of the mine to pick up miners who had not seen the emergency evacuation signal. They rushed to the third level, but by the time they arrived, the corridors leading to the elevator were blocked by water. The workers used carts and diesel-powered vehicles to drive up to the 1,000 level. Although they knew that almost all of the 297 people employed at the mines were now instantly out of work, they were all able to escape safely to the surface. Three dogs were not as lucky, and they met their untimely deaths in the watery mine.
By a stroke of luck, the 14-foot aluminum boat that Viatur and his nephew occupied was not pulled in. The water underneath them apparently drained so quickly that their boat remained lodged in the mud. They were able to step out of their boat and walk safely through the mud to the shore.
It is amazing how many people were able to escape this disaster safely, but Texaco had to pay the price for its drilling. Not only did Texaco lose millions of dollars in equipment, but due to the lawsuits that followed, they had to pay Diamond Crystal $32 million and the residents of Jefferson Island $12.8 million.
Maybe next time a company is looking to profit from fossil fuels, they should look into safer, renewable alternatives and KILL THE DRILL.
|
