In the 80s of the last century, a small lake in the United States suddenly turned into a "demon" with a big mouth. With a strong suction force, it swallowed up many animals and plants in the lake, and about 400 acres of land around the lake collapsed into it, causing huge economic losses. The culprit behind all this turned out to be a 36 cm thick drill, what is going on?
On November 20, 1980, a small freshwater lake in Louisiana, USA, suddenly made a loud noise, and a fountain of more than 100 meters burst out from the surface of the lake.
The most frightening thing is that a whirlpool rolls up at the bottom of the lake, and as it continues to accelerate and rotate, the scope of the impact becomes larger and larger. Its powerful suction force not only swallowed up many freshwater fish and other flora and fauna in the lake, but also eleven barges, a tugboat and an oil rig on the lake, and nearly 400 acres of land around the lake collapsed. The entire lake was now like a demon with an open mouth, about to swallow everything around it.
This devilish lake is called Lake Pinel, and before the incident, it was only a lake with a depth of only 5 meters. Because the depth of the lake is relatively shallow, many people like to come here for fishing and walking. There is also a small island next to Lake Pinel where there is a botanical garden that is popular with locals.
Below the beautiful lake, there are very many salt mines, and there is a salt mining company that has been mining below for 61 years. Therefore, many people do not know that there has always been an 8-story "salt mine empire" at the bottom of the lake.
In general, if there is a salt mine, there may be oil nearby. For huge profits, an oil company called Texaco won the rights to the drill, and they also bought a new rig worth $5 million.
On the morning of November 20, the oil company started work, thinking it would be easy, but as soon as the 36-centimeter drill bit stopped. The engineer thought it had hit something hard, so he let the drill bit drill down, and when it drilled nearly 500 meters, it was completely stuck.
Just as the engineers were troubleshooting the problem, disaster struck. The entire rig suddenly began to shake and tilt to one side. The engineers immediately realized the danger, abandoned the well, and fled ashore in barges. The 55 miners working under the salt mine immediately escaped by elevator and lifeboat after receiving three alarms. At that time, there was also a leisurely fisherman on the lake, and after feeling the danger, he quickly sailed the boat to the shore.
When these people escaped, what appeared in front of them was a huge whirlpool, which not only swallowed the lake, but also swallowed everything on the surface of the lake. The devouring process lasted for several days, and a beautiful botanical garden nearby slowly sank into the lake. After the water pressure balanced, nine of the eleven sunken barges ejected from the whirlpool and refloated on the lake.
Afterwards, the engineers discovered the problem, they opened the design drawings and found that the drill bit was originally prospecting in the direction of the marked oil deposit, and due to the wrong marking, the drill bit was directly drilled into the salt mine. In this way, a 36-centimeter hole appeared above the salt mine.
Due to water pressure problems, a large amount of lake water frantically poured into the mine and formed a whirlpool at the mouth of the cave. The continuous acceleration of the whirlpool formed a huge suction force, many heavy objects at the bottom of the lake were sucked over, the originally small hole was supported larger and larger, and the whirlpool became larger and larger, and finally its diameter reached an astonishing 400 meters.
The tiny Lake Pinel, because of this disaster, combined with the filling of the Gulf of Mexico, has expanded by a full 28 square kilometers, and the depth has increased from the original 5 meters to a staggering 61 meters. Lake Pinel, originally a freshwater lake, was completely turned into a saltwater lake due to the dissolution of salt mines and the influx of seawater. It turned out that the freshwater creatures in the lake died completely, and the ecological environment in the lake was completely changed. Due to the collapse of the lake, a 46-meter-high waterfall also appeared on the lake, which is still the largest waterfall in Louisiana.
The disaster caused so much property damage that the oil company and the drilling contractor settled out of court to pay $32 million to the salt mine and $12.8 million to a nearby plant nursery.
Looking back at this incident, human reasons accounted for most of them, professional engineers, marking errors such a small problem should not actually appear. And if there is a problem with the drill bit, they should immediately stop work and troubleshoot the problem, instead of drilling the head iron all the way down. However, fortunately, there were no casualties in this disaster, according to statistics, only three dogs, caught in the whirlpool, lost their lives, they are really unlucky!
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