Originally posted by: JKing106
Anyone know the real story on this? Looks like a natural gas (methane) fire to me.
Underground electrical fire. Many times these end violently (manhole explosions). The gases resulting in the explosions could be methane or natural gas from leaks. Most of the time the insulation degrades on the primary lines (13 and 33kV most common) and they heat up and begin to smoke. The outgassing can form an explosive mixture that can suddenly ignite and the sudden pressure increase will blow manhole covers nearby many feet into the air. The principle is indifferent to the common internal combustion engine.
What's going on here however is different as there is obviously a fault that's not being cleared by overcurrent relays and continues for some time. Whether the bluish color is an issue with the camera or really exists is unknown. It does have a plasma glow to it. It's very unusual to have that type of coronal ejection without noise particularly when the source is 60Hz AC. Then again it's hard to tell what else could be down there. If high power transmission lines for communication, TV etc. are involved there could be "silent" coronas but I doubt it. That would be extremely dangerous and the EMI would've probably caused artifacts on the camera used to take this video which are not present as far as I can see.
In any case the popping sounds awesome!
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