Last night, at about 1:00 AM, people a couple of towns over from me woke up to a natural gas pipeline explosion. The flames were 500-600 feet high, and I've heard reports that the flames could be seen from towns over 80 miles away (we live in the prairies, so no hills or mountains to obstruct the view).
We didn't hear about it till we saw it on Facebook the next morning. Hydro workers had to shut off gas to nine communities and the surrounding country (including our area) to extinguish the flames and to work on repairs.
Here in Central Canada, January can bring bitter cold temperatures, and we've had a fair share of bitter cold already. Tonight the wind chill (how cold it feels when the wind is blowing) is -25ºC (-13ºF). We are fortunate in that our natural gas heater only petered out towards the evening and we have electric space heaters to keep our house warm.
One positive thing that I see coming from this is that it will stimulate dialog among Canadians over the volatility of pipelines and that it will inspire people to be more vocal against the expansion of the oil sands in Alberta and the construction of bitumen pipelines either to the east coast or the west coast. Our current government is strongly pushing for oil production and pipeline construction to boost the economy, even to the point of making decades-long trade deals with China, muzzling scientific researchers, shutting down lakes research stations, destroying libraries of scientific books, removing protection of many of the country's precious lakes... suffice it to say that they acting in the interest of big corporations and not even allowing analysis of the long-term consequences. Ok Trish, stay with the positives here - this latest explosion will get more people talking!
Here is the CBC article with interesting pictures and videos: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/natural-gas-pipeline-explodes-nea...
That's intense, Trish! It must feel kind of surreal.
With much love and warm wishes,
Fred
Thanks Trish,
I hope all the people who lost service will survivie the cold. It's a been a balmy 10 degrees farenheit here in Mass. lately. I can relate to the cold weather.
Thanks for the warm wishes! I don't know why, but I found the whole situation to be very exciting, and jumped in quickly to adapt to having no hot water and a colder house.
Shaun has been gently encouraging me to consider shifting our lifestyle to off-the-grid homesteading, and the idea has freaked me out because I'm still attached to my modern comforts and having an office job routine. After I got so excited and energized the past few days, Shaun said, "See? Maybe this happened so that you could see that you would like homesteading." I laughed, "So 4000 homes went without heat so I could warm up to homesteading?" Lol!
I've been very impressed with how everyone has been helping each other. Warm-up centres were set up in three communities, Hydro and pipeline employees worked around the clock to get service restored, and hundreds of volunteers went door-to-door to assist homeowners with turning their heaters back on. I don't think anyone was hurt, and if people made purchases or stayed at a hotel because of this, they will be reimbursed.
It was great being able to take a shower this morning!
Wow Wendy, that sounds like it would be colder than normal for that area! We've had an abnormally early and cold winter this year, it will probably last us till mid April, but we're already tired of it!