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Manhole fire. WTF

D

dwell

pics?
Last week I was about to go to sleep when I heard what sounded like a big explosion outside my window. I figured it was a snowplow so I ignored it and shut my eyes. Anyway, a few minutes later I smelled burning rubber. Looked out the window and saw what honestly looked like a gas stove burner in the middle of the street with thick black smoke pillowing from it.

FDNY showed up in a few mins and for the next hour you just saw flames about 3ft high and what sounded like muffled M80s going of in succession. The whole time about 10 firefighters were just standing around shooting the shit not doing anything to put the fire out. Con Ed eventually showed up and within minutes the fire was out and FDNY took off.

Really odd. I figured it was a common occurrence seeing how everyone was so nonchalant about it. So today I am walking my dog and I smell the same burning rubber and as I walk down the block more I hear the same successive explosions. When I get closer I see a bunch of firefighters standing around. Seems another one blew up one block down from me.

WTF, is this routine or something? When they blow, can't somebody get killed?
 
Was it sewer or underground electric? If Con Ed came, it sounds like it was a burning transformer.

If it was sewer, then there are multiple possibilities. Plain old sewer gas, gasoline vapors from spills, methyl ethyl death leak, etc.
 
IronWing said:
Was it sewer or underground electric? If Con Ed came, it sounds like it was a burning transformer.

If it was sewer, then there are multiple possibilities. Plain old sewer gas, gasoline vapors from spills, methyl ethyl death leak, etc.
Click to expand...

Must have been electric because Con Ed was there all week fixing it.
 
Yes they can be extremely dangerous!
Explosions in the "sewers" can be caused by lots of things. From a flammable high VOC solvent dumped illegally down the drain, wires overheating and smoking, even natural gas leaks! Once the flammable vapors ignite BOOM! The covers can be launched high into the air and these are quite heavy.

Sometimes wires can be the sole cause and ferocious electrical fires can break out under the roadway as this example shows:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_jLmAB3leA&

Further into that video the firecracker sound you describe is heard. Down "there" is definitely a place you would NOT want to be!

The purple appearance of the flames while seemingly plasma or electrical looking is simply an artifact caused by a lack of an infrared filter in the camera.
 
dwell said:
Must have been electric because Con Ed was there all week fixing it.
Click to expand...
Electrical would explain the firefighters standing around. Ain't nothing they can do until the electric company kills the lines. Then the fires burn themselves out so there isn't much to do anyway.
 
Rubycon said:
Sometimes wires can be the sole cause and ferocious electrical fires can break out under the roadway as this example shows:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_jLmAB3leA&

Further into that video the firecracker sound you describe is heard. Down "there" is definitely a place you would NOT want to be!

The purple appearance of the flames while seemingly plasma or electrical looking is simply an artifact caused by a lack of an infrared filter in the camera.
Click to expand...

OMG. That is exactly it! Purple flames and all (yes the flame was red and purple in person). Picture that going off outside your window and nobody really panicking. So surreal.
 
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dwell said:
OMG. That is exactly it! Purple flames and all. Picture that going off outside your window and nobody really panicking. So surreal.
Click to expand...

Did you see purple flames like the video?

There's no need to panic unless the flames are under your feet. 😉
 
Rubycon said:
Did you see purple flames like the video?

There's no need to panic unless the flames are under your feet. 😉
Click to expand...

Yes, that's the thing, the flames were purple (I was talking to someone who got closer to it who said he saw green flames -- dunno). It was definitely strange stuff. And the successive explosions, exactly the same.
 
Electrical fire/explosions can be scary! Not much you can do till they kill the power, and from some of the youtube videos I've seen, they can be very slow at doing so!

This one particular video I seen at one point, I'm not sure how, but it was actually making all the houses spark up too, probably caused lot of damage. Guessing it was a floating neutral or something but not sure. A tree branch had fallen on the lines.
 
Actually you would really want to worry if the flames started playing King Crimson's 21st century schizoid man at 160 decibels! 😀
 
Acanthus said:
You would think they could have some kind of thermally activated killswitch or even a "fuse" type of system to prevent those from torching areas/people/nearby things rather than manually shutting down the power.
Click to expand...

You're too tech, for my low brown humor...
 
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