Louisiana sinkhole – fears of radioactivity and gas explosion as sinkhole gets bigger

Two workers were rescued Thursday after at least 50 feet of earth collapsed into a sinkhole that appeared nearly two weeks ago in Assumption Parish, Louisiana, officials said.

The workers were on a boat that was tied to a tree when the land gave way, trapping them on the vessel, police spokeswoman Kim Torres told CNN in a telephone interview An airboat rescued them soon after; neither worker was hurt, she said.

Natural Gas Pipeline Emergency Backup System Affected by Louisiana Sinkhole

Chevron Corp’s subsidiary Bridgeline Holdings uses those salt domes in Napoleonville, LA that have the expanding sinkhole.

According to their website “As owner and operator of three natural gas salt dome storage caverns in S. Louisiana, all integrated into its pipeline facilities, Bridgeline offers unsurpassed gas storage capacity, service and interconnections. Substantially increasing the range of services available, these storage caverns feature the operational flexibility to meet almost any gas supply need – including pipeline balancing, emergency backup, no-notice service, needle and seasonal peaking, winter/summer price hedging and storage spread hedging.”

Earlier it was reported the butane-filled well is only 1500 feet from the sinkhole and it will not be emptied.

A breach of that well, Assumption Parish Sheriff Mike Waguespack said, could be "catastrophic,” CNN reports.

If ignited, the butane well would release as much explosive energy as 100 Hiroshima bombs, Deborah Dupré's scientist sources told her Sunday.

Potential butane explosive capacity calculated

The 1.5 million barrels of liquid butane 1500 feet from the sinkhole has an explosive capacity of 100 Hiroshima nuclear bombs, 1.5 times the explosive force of the largest thermonuclear weapon in current service in the U.S., according to Wikipedia scientific data and popular citizen reporter, Dutchsince, and confirmed by Dupré's sources this weekend.

Excluding secondary oil and gas pipeline and refinery explosions, direct effects of such a single bomb blast in Bayou Corne, fifty miles from Baton Rouge, would include Donaldsonville, Louisiana, according to NUKEMAP simulations showing an H-bomb this size would produce:

"Fire-ball radius: (central orange circle): 0.62 km / 0.39 mi. Maximum size of the nuclear fireball; relevance to lived effects depends on height of detonation.

"Air blast radius: 3.8 km / 2.1 mi (red shaded circle) 20 psi overpressure; heavily built concrete buildings are severely damaged or demolished; fatalities approach 100%

"Air blast radius: 8.93 km / 5.55 mi (gray shaded circle) 4.6 psi overpressure; most buildings collapse; injuries universal, fatalities widespread.

"Thermal radiation radius: 15.18 km / 9.43 mi (outer orange shaded circle) Third-degree burns to all exposed skin; starts fires in flammable materials, contributes to firestorm if large enough."

Inhalation of butane can cause euphoria, drowsiness, narcosis, asphyxia, cardiac arrhythmia, temporary memory loss and frostbite, which can result in death from asphyxiation and ventricular fibrillation.

Lake Peigneur example

Eighty miles west of Bayou Corne is Lake Peigneur that balances above a salt dome that collapsed in 1980 when a drilling rig punctured a protective layer in the salt mine wall, causing the entire lake, including a drilling rig, several larger barges and large chunks of surrounding land to be pulled down into the cavern. Pressure was so great, the bayou ran backwards, created a large waterfall, and was sucked back into the puncture hole. The event permanently affected the ecosystem of the lake by changing the lake from freshwater to saltwater and increasing the depth of part of the lake.

The lake drained into the hole, expanding the size of that hole as the soil and salt were washed into the mine by the rushing water, filling the enormous caverns left by the removal of salt over the years. The resultant whirlpool sucked in the drilling platform, eleven barges, many trees and 260,000 m² (65 acres) of the surrounding terrain. So much water drained into those caverns that the flow of the Delcambre Canal that usually empties the lake into Vermilion Bay was reversed, making the canal a temporary inlet.

Here is a video to explain what happened in Lake Peigneur.