Clarifications and more videos! The explosion of the gas pipeline took place between the two villages of #Maly Mayak and #Vynogradne near #Alushta – now it is the #Yalta district. The gas main could not withstand the hot operating conditions. It is still impossible to extinguish the flame :)

3 comments

1. You put out a gas line by shutting the valves above and below the fire and wait for the gas to burn off. Suspect there are significant distances between valves so a whole lot of gas needs to burn off before this will go out.

   Edit

   Add – You can also dig out the line above and below the fire and pinch it with special equipment but that also takes time to do.

2. Is this Russian territory that’s burning gas?

3. I’m confused, perhaps because I’m taking the headline literally.

   Surely it’s not SO hot in Crimea this summer that a gasline explodes? If a gasline explodes under average/survivable human weather conditions…you’re doing your gas line wrong.

   20s C (80s F) should not cause this, even if the contractor was all sorts of negligent in building it … the negligence may cause it (but not because of summer weather).

   Or am I missing the joke? (This is entirely possible).

   Or is this like in Texas where the power plants –including the gas plants– froze in a decadal storm? The windmills also froze, despite windmills in Alaska and Minnesota being just fine. Texas is just … I’ll be nice. Texas is “strong willed” and doesn’t take advisories from experts or other states at all. Texas knows better (and then shoots itself in the foot, constantly). Because regulation is bad, even when refusal to acknowledge best practices literally kills your own citizens.

   edit: are there not throttles or choke valves or something spaced every so often along the pipeline? Those should be there to help prevent or mitigate disasters, and this is one of many sorts of crises that a gas line can experience…use the choke valves. This is physics, not brain surgery.