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The way the whole street went up in a line like that, I bet it was a sewer gas explosion. Edit for the [dead]: sewer gas isn't gasoline in the sewer. Sewage p
by mcpackieh 3y ago
The way the whole street went up in a line like that, I bet it was a sewer gas explosion.
Edit for the [dead]: sewer gas isn't gasoline in the sewer. Sewage produces hydrogen sulfide, an explosive gas. There are many videos online of sewers blowing up after people drop lit cigarettes into sewers and in those videos the street is often blown apart like is shown in the OP video.
- roseway4 3y agoJohannesburg has municipal natural gas lines. They’re more likely to be the culprit here than sewage.
- slashdev 3y agoGiven how incompetently utilities are run in South Africa, a gas leak in a municipal line would surprise me not at all.
- petertodd 3y agoNatural gas lines are very unlikely to explode on their own. Unless something extremely serious has gone wrong, they only contain methane, without oxygen, so even if they're cut and ignited all you'll get is a localized fire where the leak is. Much more likely that natural gas leaked into an existing void containing air... such as a sewer line.
- mav88 3y agoMethane explosion. If it was LPG gas there would have been a flame. Plus there are no gas lines in that particular block.
- aaron695 3y agoIt's not "sewer gas". It would be natural gas that leaked in. Normally it would not be the sewer since it should be sealed, unlike storm water, but many cities still mix sewer and stormwater. You can see the pipe is actually square in some pics, which is not normally sewage in developed places. Gasoline in the sewer occasionally happens, but there's no reason to think that happened here. I'm surprised no terrorists have tried gasoline in the sewer. Or maybe they have and it doesn't work and just like lazy universities they don't write up the null hypothesis.