UPDATE: The powers that be in Texas are still allowing un-odorized natural gas to be piped under children. So, I am re-posting this because I think it is relevant to the Carter Avenue Scandal in Fort Worth.One of Chesapeake Energy's propaganda techniques, when someone objects to the location of one of their drilling operations, is to paint the objector as an out of touch iconoclast stuck back in time.
I don't mind being an iconoclast. Below, I'll be showing you two videos of Texas natural gas explosions. The first occurred on March 18, 1937, two months before the Hindenburg blimp blew up in New Jersey. The Hindenburg disaster is etched in America's memory, well those American's who remember such things. Sadly our numbers are dwindling. Few Americans know of the New London School Disaster.
In 1937, out in East London in East Texas, natural gas pipelines running under the New London School, unbeknownst to anyone, because no odor was detected, because, at that time, no odor was added to natural gas, leaked. The gas was trapped under the school and began leaking from the trap into enclosed crawlspace that ran the 253 foot length of the school.
Students had been complaining of headaches for some time, but no one investigated as to why their heads were hurting.
And then sometime after 3:05, that fateful day, an instructor, Lemmie R. Butler, turned on an electric sander. It is believed that a spark from that sander ignited the explosion that destroyed the school, killing over 300 students and teachers, in the worst school disaster in American history.
Adolf Hitler sent his condolences. Walter Cronkite was sent to New London on one of his first assignments and throughout his career he continued to say this was the worst thing he ever covered.
As a result of what happened in New London, Texas, it was mandated an odor be added to natural gas, that being the sulfur smell we are all familiar with.
Chesapeake Energy's Propagandists will claim that modern technology has solved all the technical problems that might have made drilling for natural gas and transporting it in urban pipelines, safe, like those pipelines now being run all over, under Fort Worth and Tarrant County. Pipelines under homeowner's yards, under their streets, pipelines through which natural gas flows that HAS NOT YET HAD THE SULPHUR ODOR ADDED.
Below is a newsreel type video of the New London School Disaster. Below that a more recent Texas natural gas explosion.
The Chesapeake Energy Propaganda Purveyors claim their industry is safe, that modern technology has solved all those little problems that existed in the last century, that we are living in the age of I-Phones, Flat Panel TVs, the Internet and Space Shuttles, that we don't live in an age where things blow up. Oh, scratch that last one on the list. Accidents happen, but not in the Chesapeake Energy world.
Below is video of a natural gas explosion that occurred in Texas on April 29, 2007. I guess Chesapeake Energy has made tremendous advances since that date and this type thing is no longer possible.
Meanwhile, I've got Chesapeake Energy back drilling across the street, again. So, do not be fooled by thinking that once they are gone, that they don't show up again.
Natural gas explosions are very scary. About 6 years ago, on a Saturday morning around 5AM, I was up and about doing mommy stuff. I had just poured another cup of joe, sat on the couch when I felt the entire house shake, windows rattle and I heard a sound similar to a sonic boom. I was quite shaken. Justin woke at that time and came running into the living room, while I was searching out the window for the cause of all the commotion. Out in the distance, in the dawn before bright sunlight approaches...one could see a brilliant light across the horizon. Later, we found out that there had been a natural gas explosion at the gas plant in Jal.
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