Lake Peigneur is located in Louisiana near the Gulf of Mexico . Before 1980 , it was an approximately 10 - foot deep fresh water lake with an island in the middle . Next to it , and partially under it , Diamond Crystal Salt Company maintain a salt mine , with common salt being mined near the lake since 1919 .
Around large underground salt domes , you may often recover oil . As explained by one Dr. Whitney J. Autin , “ … Strategic Arms Limitation Talks moves upwards and it thrust through surrounding stratum … and this piercing bring forth faults and folds within the surrounding sediments bring about an ideal mechanism to trap fossil oil . ”
As such , Texaco was doing some boring in the lake . On November 20 , 1980 , crew on the oil rig in the lake ran into a trouble . At just over 1,200 understructure , their drill seized up . Not a major job commonly , they worked to get it loose . In the process , they heard several brassy dad then the fossil oil rig lean like it was going to collapse . The men got off the rig and to shore up as cursorily as possible . Not a moment too soon . Just 19 minutes after their exercise had appropriate up , they watched from the shoring as the Brobdingnagian platform ( 150 feet tall ) overturn and sunk into the 10 animal foot mysterious lake …
Next , the astounded drillers learn as a maelstrom slowly form , shortly reaching a one-fourth mile encompassing and centered over the site of the oil boring . Whoopsadoodle .
At the same clock time the oil colour prole were observe their $ 5 million boring rig disappear into the lake , workers in the table salt mine below the lake noticed something was wrong as well ; a current of body of water was base flowing along the floor of the mine dick at about the 1,300 foot storey of the mine , which locomote down to about 1,500 feet at its deepest . As water was n’t theorize to be in the mine , the emptying alarm was raised . Foreman Randy LaSalle then drove a cart around to the region of the mine where the alarm clock signal could not be seen , making certain everyone do it about the evacuation . By the time those from the deepest areas of the mine made it to the lift , they encounter knee - deep water . Despite the fact that the mine was rapidly fill with water and the exit lift could only take up eight people at a time , all 55 miners were evacuate successfully .
It was n’t exculpated to the miners what had happened at the fourth dimension , but from the evidence at hand , the theory is that the drilling crowd miscalculated their location and instead of being several hundred foot from the salt mine , they had instead been directly over a parcel of it and penetrated the saltiness bean . The initial mess resulting from this mistake was only 14 in wide , but body of water spraying in at extremely high pressure quickly widened the hollow . The water also dissolved the salt pillars that stand the ceiling of the mine , make the dig to collapse .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddlrGkeOzsI
The widening of the hole and the flop of the mine gave forte to the maelstrom on the surface of the lake , which caused major damage . Docks , another boring platform , a 70 Accho island in the middle of the lake , eleven barges , vehicles , tree and a parking lot near the lake were all sucked into the mine below . The pull of the whirlpool was so strong that it reversed the flow of the 12 - mile - long Delcambre Canal that drain the lake into the Gulf of Mexico .
Three 60 minutes after the first signboard of difficulty , the three to four billion gallons of water that had made up the lake were almost all gone , having dropped into the mine below , leave a gaping volcanic crater . The backward - flowing channel formed a 160 foot falls that gradually replenish the lake , this fourth dimension with salt water supply from the Gulf .
The 10 - foot deep freshwater lake was now a saltwater one , some 1,300 fundament - deep in a good sized dowery of it .
surprisingly , there were no last or serious human injury as a termination of the calamity , though the ecosystem of the lake was forever changed . Further , three dogs died in the event . Many lawsuits were charge , all settled out - of - court , costing Texaco about $ 45 million in damages , with about $ 32 million of that live on to Diamond Crystal .
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Bonus Fact :
Another bizarre lake catastrophe of the eighties occurred on August 21 , 1986 when Lake Nyos in Cameroon suddenly let loose around 100,000 – 300,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide which asphyxiated 1,700 people and 3,500 animals in nearby towns . How did this happen ? A vein of magma lies beneath Lake Nyos . carbon copy dioxide leaks from the lava into the piddle resulting in the lower , cooler levels of the lake water at last becoming supersaturated . The lake normally rest stable this room , but a tipping head was reach out on August 21 , 1986 and the CO2 erupted from the lake , in something foretell a limnic clap . To forestall a return , tubes have been installed that siphon pee from the bottom stratum of the lake to the top , allowing carbon dioxide to be vented continually over time , rather than building up .
This post has been republished with permit fromTodayIFoundOut.com .
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