youtube.com — Early in the morning on November 21, 1980, twelve men decided to abandon their oil drilling rig, on Lake Peigneur, on the suspicion that it was beginning to collapse beneath them. Unbeknown to the crew, they drilled through the lake bottom to a salt mine below. After three hours, the lake was drained of its 3.5 billion gallons of water.
Jul 27, 2006 View in Crawl 4
greenampJul 27, 2006
I wonder if it was a local company or a big oil company who owned the rig responsible?
peterfryJul 27, 2006
more on Centralia mine fires + pics<a class="user" href="http://www.offroaders.com/album/centralia/centralia.htm">http://www.offroaders.com/album/centralia/centralia.htm</a>
gettophilosophrJul 27, 2006
They mentioned that...as the enormous volume of water rushes in, it dissolves more and more of the salt. The water filled the mine, but also dissolved large portions of it away; the lake probably filled the mine and the entire salt bed.The part that I think is great is the part where it drains and then immediately starts refilling with sal****er. :-D
cixelJul 28, 2006
ive heard a couple of things like thisi remember my grandmother telling me about some midwest town i believe it was where the lake emptied and turned into a vortex that whipped around the edge of the lake in a swell and dragged all the buildings in with it and sent it out to the ocean or something.also this has happened a few times in florida in karst topography because of sinkholes. one just recently was a man-made lake over by tampa i believe it was which left their boat docks high and dry but i heard of one in the 90s that dragged a bunch of alligators down with it and other animals who were fighting it out in the hole that remained.also i recall a looong time ago seeing i think it was a picture in national geographic fire coming out of cracks in the ground and it was some mine in texas that had caught fire and it was natural gas burning through cracks in the desert floor.thats nothing though, if you go back far enough in parts of africa there are the fossilized remnants of a natural fission reactor which resulted in too much natural uranium being in the same place. this general area is where alot of uranium ore is mined from.i wish i had links but to anyone looking for more information on stuff like this thats all i can recall but may help your googling.
dred1367Jul 28, 2006
whoever it was that said myth busters were wrong in saying a boat couldn't be sucked under by a whirlpool...That is correct, they can't be. What happened here was a total draining of the lake so there was no water left for the boats to float on. then the river began rushing in to refill it and this brought the boats afloat later on.
zforresterJul 29, 2006
Man, some of those people are retarded."The whirlpool is basically a vortex of water and mud [...] flowing downwards under the force of gravity."Thanks, Bill Nye. I'm informed now.And I'm pretty sure the old guy is lying about his boat going down into the hole for insurance purposes.But, cool stuff, either way.
depthfunctionJul 29, 2006
Gosh, and I thought "intense sucking power" was a good thing.
zforresterJul 29, 2006
I can appreciate fine, delicate sarcasm
3dfxgamerJul 31, 2006
So all we need is to find a large lake over Centralia and drill through the bottom of it. Fire is out problem solved.
petrarch1603Aug 1, 2006
here is a satelite map of Centralia, PA <a class="user" href="http://terraserver-usa.com/usgsentry.aspx?T=1&S=10&Z=18&X=1934&Y=22589&W=3">http://terraserver-usa.com/usgsentry.aspx?T=1&S=10&Z=18&X=1934&Y=22589&W=3</a>
jwrezzAug 8, 2006
Did any one see that "myth busters" when they tried to recreate a whirlpool? They said there could never be any thing powerful enough to suck down a cargo ship. That thing looked pretty darn close!