3 ms·
One nice thing about electric though, is you don't get stuff like this: https://www.npr.org/2018/09/13/647621382/multiple-explosions-and-fires-reported-across-
by mindcrime 5y ago
One nice thing about electric though, is you don't get stuff like this:
https://www.npr.org/2018/09/13/647621382/multiple-explosions-and-fires-reported-across-3-massachusetts-towns-at-least-3-i https://www.npr.org/2018/09/13/647621382/multiple-explosions...
And while that's an extreme example, fire departments in areas with natural gas tend, from what I've seen/heard to go out on a lot of "gas leak" calls over the course of a year. Sure, some are false alarms, or very small leaks that are quickly and easily mitigated, but any one of them could turn into a catastrophe. And it's not exactly rare for that to happen. Not common-place, but it happens more often than anybody would really like. And when gas explosions happen, they tend to injure/kill multiple people and destroy lots of property.
This is not, of course, to suggest that electricity is without danger as well.
- MarkusWandel 5y agoThat was an unusual setup (at least I hope it's unusual) where the gas piping under the street runs at working pressure (for the furnaces) with no local regulators at the houses. So a central fault (accidental cross connection to high pressure) caused a catastrophe. Where I live, and hopefully most places, the distribution network runs at high pressure - causing a nice loud hiss when someone backhoes into it, which surprisingly never seems to cause a fire - but with each house individually regulated. One hopes that the house regulators have a "fail closed" mode on input overpressure, but I don't actually know.