Manhole Explosions in Albany

Manhattan has experienced at least one exploding manhole, on March 22, 2018.

This frequently happens in NYC, too. A good friend of mine that has now retired from Con Ed told me to never park over a manhole cover, particularly in the winter. It happens so often that unless it inconveniences many others it doesn't make the news.

Infrastructure maintenance everywhere is a big problem. It's expensive, unrewarding, fraught with NIMBY and certainly not glamorous.

It looks like you were right.

What’s With All The Manhole Explosions ? Con Edison Explains

The most common culprit in underground electrical fires is a combination of melting snow and road salt combining to corrode underground equipment, which can lead to smoke, fire, and occasionally enough pressure to send a manhole cover into the air.

Some are more spectacular than others.

Why Manhole Explosions Happen in the Summer

I'd never have thought about the road salt seeping down below the road into the infrastructure. Very good point.

New York

Birmingham

..."400 Manholes Have Exploded in Flames This Week"...

I used to live in Albany back in the 70's, and worked in the city, don't remember any manholes ever exploding...but I don't remember much,, so....Like most cities, they need to start rebuilding the infrastructure, modernizing....

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Don't remember much of the 70's?? I had a wife who loved to say, if you remember the '60's, you weren't there. While we don't have flames, after a good rain, our manholes turn into fountains. In deference to the current trend of more gender neutral terms, they would more accurately named "@#itholes"

Heck, I still have clear memories of a few things in the mid and late '40s, lots of things from the '50s, and a whole lot of things from the '60s.

The only hole covers I remember from those earliest days were in outhouses.

" the vaults that contain the utilities electrical cables are also used for sewer, water and telephone lines ".

Interesting how the " utilities " can combine all of the " services " in a bundle, but the building codes won't allow all of the services to enter, contained within or exit a private residence or business.

Aside from this, the article claims that this is an ongoing an continuing issue, so why are the vaults being built or installed in the same place or manner ? Answer : things that don't break, don't need to get fixed . It is a type of corruption, they know that it's a bad idea, but if they make it better, it won't need as much maintenance, and you won't need as many employees and you can't have that. If they could make the situation worse and get away with it, they would.

In my experience this is simply not true, in most cases the city (or utility) does not have the funding to separate the utilities or they would. Nobody is putting the lives of people at risk because the current system ensures them a job. In the almost 30 years I have been working with various utilities and other governmental and quasi-governmental entities I have never seen this type of attitude. The people most at risk are the field crews that work for the utility.

I've been trying to suggest that certain electrical manhole covers should be designed as hinged covers since 1973, to act like really big pressure-relief valves, and still, nobody is rethinking the issue...

For obvious health reasons, sewer-water-collection-pipelines and treated-water-distribution-pipelines are supposed to be two separated systems. Under competent design management, the two systems would never be mixed (and fresh rainwater draining into sewer lines is not regarded as the same category because fresh rainwater is not treated water...).

I would be more than willing to compromise on getting manhole covers with 6 or 7 1" diam. vertical holes through them, to let the odor dissipate before it could accumulate... (Any sewage-related methane would escape to the atmosphere at the treatmant plant anyway...)

A hinge can easily seize with corrosion. Sometimes an underground electrical system fails explosively as the video shows. Having the manhole cover launch vertically between buildings is safer than tearing the hinge making a spinning low to the ground saw heading towards a building.

...and how safe would it seem for such a falling manhole cover to impact your vehicle, and then, possibly cause a chain-reaction of more vehicles colliding with your vehicle?...

..and just how much longer would it take for a hinge-less manhole cover, or its' collar, to rust enough to need replacing?

London

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_kLqxyfdMk

More recently, Cleveland has had a rash of similar explosions and fires in their utility tunnels!

This used to happen from time to time at a pharmaceutical factory site on the eastern side of London. After detecting flammable gases from time to time in the works' sewer system and a bit of ingenious pattern recognition, the cause was traced to the activities of another nearby, smaller, site that transported its flammable wastes to the first-mentioned site and tipped them in; the second site did not have an effluent treatment facility whereas the first one did. Access covers would go into orbit, sometimes landing on, and sometimes even passing through, building roofs as they re-entered the biosphere. The re-entry phenomenon was what precipitated the investigation.

The Engineering Manager put a stop to the deliveries, and the problem went away.

The moral of this story is "don't put [any combination of] paint thinners/petrol/nail varnish remover/anything else flammable down the drain".

Ancient infrastructure.

I know this will probably rock some of you all's world, but it falls under the heading of acceptable losses. AS we grew as a culture we established a value on human life because, well, business. You might remember GM deciding it was more profitable to allow certain people to die and pay off the survivors than it would to actually recall the cars and fix the issue. No one is in jail either.

Companies, cities, governments all do this same calculation.

Many responders to this posting have talked of underground electrical cables and other materials such as road salt/water causing exploding manhole covers. The covers still "explode" in suburbia and at much higher rates than what people realize. During the spring thaw and winter freeze many are caused by natural gas traveling from a leak caused by ground settling and the gas traveling through the path of least resistance, the looser sand or dirt that surrounds the pipe.

The gas then travels to the sewer pipes buried in the street. There are no other utilities there because the electrical lines are either overhead or directly buried in the ground. Gas piping is buried, usually in the street near a curb. This is all based on the path of least resistance. The gas LEL is reached, a spark source then ignites the accumulated gas and the resultant almost instantaneous pressure increase lifts the manhole cover.

I have seen this happen but only with a "burp" of the manhole cover.

On March 8, 2018, the Ho-Ho-Kus, NJ, Volunteer Fire Dept was confronted with a larger and extremely dangerous incident. The following is a video of the actual incident as it happened. Watch carefully at it around the 25 second mark. The electrical arcing started the incident going but the explosion was due to an accumulation of gas:

What happens when a tree snaps a powerline

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmqAP0UlD_g&feature=youtu.be

Also listed are two articles of interest. A thorough analysis of the incident by a firefighter guru, Billy Goldfeder. Then an analysis of manhole explosions.

https://www.firehouse.com/operations-training/article/21002173/close-calls-explosion-blows-manhole-covers-into-the-air-billy-goldfeder

Manhole Cover Explosions - Causes and Case Studies

https://www.technokontrol.com/pdf/siaps/William_Black_1.pdf

Good Luck, Old Salt