That Time a City Randomly Blew Up (And Drilling a 14 Inch Hole Accidentalleed a HUGE Saltwater Lake) 

Kudos to the crew of the salt mine. They recognized the danger and made sure everyone got out. That could have gone rather differently even with a small delay.

Seeing a several hundred foot tall rig swallowed in 10 feet of water must've felt like witnessing a cursed meme

Accidentalleed?

I was 5 years old when this happened but clearly remember how it was living trough that time. I was extremely fortunate to not live in the danger zone, but at the time, there was so little info, that it seemed like any street could blow up, anywhere, at any given time. they opened up all the sewers and there was an eerie feeling in the air. I wasn't old enough to understand the potential danger, so to me it was kind of a cool experience (given that i wasn't exposed to the real horrors of it) it felt like being in some sort of disaster movie. as soon as my extended family established communication it was decided that it would be best to wait it out at a restaurant that my aunt owned literally at the edge of town. it was one of my most fun memories, since it was the biggest family reunion we ever had. it was essentially a giant sleepover. I was greeted by my cousins who were already having a blast, then once the sun came down, we all prayed for about an hour. then the adults started to go to sleep while my cousins and I stayed up chatting, but whispering as to not wake up the adults. if i remember correctly we avoided turning on the lights for fear that the electricity might spark an explosion, so it was completely dark. I'm sure it must have been very calming to all the grown ups to see us all having fun, and knowing that there was relatively little risk of explosion since we were in a very underdeveloped area, surrounded by fields, on the side of the highway. the next day, word started spreading that it might be over and everyone started heading home. before anyone says any hate, i do understand how fortunate i was to be sheltered from the entire experience which killed hundreds, injured thousands, and displaced tens of thousands, and mortified the entire city. interesting fact; one of my cousins, who was also there, but was about 6 months younger than me, had completely zero memory of that entire event even happening during our lifetimes. as adults we were arguing because he didnt believe me that we lived trough it , and he was adamant that it happened before we were born, he even called his mom on speakerphone to ask her, only to have her corroborate everything i had just told him.

People keep insisting flying cars will never be a thing, but Mexico had them back in the 90's.

Kudos to Diamond for having safety protocols and getting everyone out of the salt mine.

i'm impressed a member of the seed oil company board shut down operations for safety concerns.

Yo my family lives in Guadalajara I never expected in my life to hear this story from fact boy

I was a scared little kid at the time legitimately asking if the teenage mutant ninja turtles were ok.

Sewer Department: Guys, we've got a problem. Fire Department: Guys, we've got a problem. Civil Defense: Fire Department, you do this, we'll do that, problem solved! Later that night: Sewer Department: Guys, we've still got a pro- Everyone else: Shuttup, Juan! You're just the sewer guy!

When your gut tells you that something is wrong and the government says “nothing to see here”.. it’s time to get out of dodge.

only from the title and the thumbnail I knew you were going to talk about the Guadalajara disaster, I clearly remember all channels (all 5 of them) cutting transmission for the news and everything looked like a scene from an apocalyptic movie. I remember my father saying something about how "as always Pemex being careless".

I am stunned this managed to come into the radar. To add into the mix, the response of the population to help in the disaster was unprecedented. Even when they were told that more explosions could occur the heroism of the people helping trapped residents was unmatched.

Thank you for posting, Simon. As someone who lived through it, that's pretty much as I remember it.

You had me at city blew up.

“That’s the LAST time I eat Taco Bell.”

"Whoopsadoodle" is what I said when I read the title. 😅

What is it about the oil industry that makes everyone involved to be comically corrupt and evil?

All the black and white photos from the 90's really makes me feel old...

Man,no one can beat Mexican fireworks

Both very interesting cases. I think I would have preferred each as a stand-alone. There was a lot to process from the Guadalajara tragedy and it felt, to me, disrespectful of their incredible losses to jump straight into the next case. Thank you for sharing these anyway!

Texaco destroys two ecosystems (the lake and the mine) in one day, gets the equivalent of a disapproving look and a finger waggle as punishment. Seems like par for the course.

I went to Guadalajara on a business trip a few weeks after the event, The taxi from the airport to the hotel drove over a temporary bailey bridge, one of many bridging the gap since the hole city was cut across. At the time it had been cleared from most debris, but it was quite strange to see the broken houses opening over such a huge gap. Since the subway had just been opened we joked that they were working on an extension. It really was that big, enough to run trains on it.

I've heard of this disaster before...one of those "Seconds From Disaster" variants or something...but it's still insane and shocking to hear, even though I've heard it before. I can't imagine how the gas company couldn't NOTICE they were losing THAT much gasoline.

We truly don't deserve this world, but humans are going to human.

15,000 feet isn't 1500 feet oopsie.

The whole fading in and out blur effect is fucking with my eyes

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="715">11:55</a> hahaha 15,000 isnt 1500 😂 whoopsie

I thought you were going to say that "thinking their job had been done, they settled back and had a celebratory cigarette "

15,000 feet?

One of many good examples of why monopolies are bad

I lived in Guadalajara when I was a kid so when the story of the explosion came out I paid attention. I followed the story at the time. What I remember is them blaming some guy and his mother cycle that had a fuel tank leak for the whole thing. Thank you for the update. I never could imagine one motorcycle tank of fuel being enough to cause such an explosion.

Greetings from Guadalajara. We still remember the day. It's like a collective trauma. There are songs about it. The news and local tv still talk about it every year. By the way, Pemex was not a private company. At the time, Pemex was the only company in the country who could legally extract, process and sell oil. Going against Pemex would be going against the goverment directly.

I went to Guadalajara once, had a blast.

I'm a commercial diver and the thought of any kind of water pull.. to take out an oil rig omg.

People pick bouquets of oopsie daisies all the time.

That firefighter in the lower left corner of the picture looks like he is wearing a Darth Vader helmet. Allegedly

On April 13, 1981 in Louisville Ky a series of explosions destroyed several miles of the sewer system. The Ralston Purina prcicessing plant allowed a luquid hexane to flow into the sewers. Explosions began at befote dawn and continued until mid afternoon. There were no serious injuries but considerable property damage.

I remember learning about the Guadalajara explosion in an episode of Modern Marvels Engineering Disasters. It detailed that a bunch of fuel leaked from the Pemex facility and nobody could hold them accountable. And the engineering problem came when a sewer pipe created an airlock due to the pipe bending down then up again while filled with liquid and yes fuel, then apparently a spark or lit cigarette found its way into the sewer. The details of the corroding pipe due to another being nearby was just one of a few plausible explainations.

If only there was a banger podcast about engineering disasters. Oh shit, it’s “well there’s your problem”

Simon your beard is amazing. your videos are awesome too

I've adopted the "whoopsadoodle" and my students love it, so thank you for entertainment value

Watching this at Guadalajara 🎉

Plainly Difficult has a wonderful doc on the lake on his channel it really is very good.

Could you do a more detailed video on that Texaco lake accident, that sounds really interesting

I remember when that happened. Crazy.

Here is a story idea, in the 1950's the town of Roseburg Oregon blew up, thanks to one idiot truck driver not following safety protocols. It was so powerful of an explosion it caused landslides several miles away.

has simon done a video about what can happen when two bodies of water are joined for one reason or another? this salt mine flood appears to have similar mechanics behind it. what starts as a trickle turns into a gushing torrent pretty quick

In any case, I learned a new word here 👍

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely ~ John Dalberg-Acton.

I remember watching this on a TV show called "Seconds from disaster" a couple decades ago. I don't remember what happened.

Hey I’ve seen Seconds from Disaster, I know about this 😎

You should cover the Louisville sewer explosion. I wasn't born yet. My parents moved to Louisville about a month after it happened and clean up was still going on.

I remember that. At the time they reported gasoline dumped in the sewer by a refinery.

Simon is my favorite AI presenter

My neck is itchy from watching this.

Today on 'Today I Found Out'...the script is put in the wrong pile: One of Danny's scripts for Blaze Brain ended up in the pile...10min+ of tangent story,

If this wasn't an actual event, it'd be an excellent topic for Decoding the Unknown.

YAY!!! I'm not the only one who uses "humans humaning"!

Always thought about the empty holes we leave in the earth.

They should've listened to Jose, that dude always knows whats up

Don't. Drink. Tapwater. In. Mexico. Ever.....

That wasn't "accidentalleed." That was negligentleed.

I remember. It was absolutely horrible. So many burned. Terrible.

I remember in the summer of 1992 being on a vessel tied up alongside a Mexican oil platform. Never seen such a dreadful mess. Scary being tied to that thing. We had departed from Louisiana so the lake story isn't too much of a surprise either. My previous trip had been to Belfast and I remember thinking how many more things were blowing up in Louisiana than in Northern Ireland.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="400">6:40</a> so nobody is at fault? It's just the price of progress?

Dang, in early today.

Nice

I remeber this

This is an Unintended Consequences episode.

One could say the mining company from the second story were feeling a bit, salty.

yo any fish in that lake before they started drilling would’ve had a WILD story to tell their friends… right before they died, that is 😂

Simon said no deaths, but he also said all but 5 of those miners made it out.

24 hours later, it's still accidentalleed.

Starfishes pulled the rig down

On the plus side, they probably fixed that pothole fairly rapidly.

They made a "seconds before disaster" show about the Mexico town. A few people knew about it.

Bree Street in Johannesburg, South Africa please Simon.

This could be happening right now in Mexico city

Texaco was not drilling in the "wrong place" and drilled into the mine. The mine was incorrectly mapped.

Damnit Dave

@<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="491">8:11</a> darth vader watching the Death Star explode

"everythign is Ok, there is nothing to worry about" typical authorities.

Whoopsadoodle - Flanders as a kid raised by beatniks

Fun south Louisiana pronunciation. Delcambre is pronounced like “Dell-come” with the emphasis on the dell. You have to love a place with last names like Zeringue (zur ang) and Champagne (chom pon). 😂😂😂

That title is wiiiildin😂

Whoopsadaisy!

Re US lake draining into mine - sounds like a plot for a James Bond super villain! Oh, wait...

Listening to this while doing hexane extractions

Hello Simon. Thank`s for another entertaining video. But... As , I think, Mythbusters, tested the "cigarette" theory impossible, as in the film "Payback" with Mel Gibson. So.. The cigarette, can not, ignite the fumes of gasoline. Quod erat demonstrandum. Please, correct me if I am wrong. from a Finn in Diaspora

As a former resident of New Iberia, I fully expected factboi to mangle the pronunciation of Lake Peigneur. Especially since he usually doesn't give AF about pronunciation.

Isn't Guadalajara incredibly historically important? That's sad.

Pemex's logo is dope!

Love this! <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="194">3:14</a> - <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="205">3:25</a> ❤️🕊️🙌

Simon, your beard distracted me. It's almost long enough to curl into ringlets and decorate with flowers. Like a Renaissance Faire Romeo. 🥰

Why do humans become evil when concentrated in large corporations?

I live near that lake 😄. Many people in town don’t really have a clue about it anymore. My wife used to swim and play in it. I wouldn’t knowing the depths I do now 🥴

Flying Cars invented in Guadalajara Mexico 🇲🇽 on April 22nd, 1992. How is this not known to everyone?

_attributing it to annual cleaning at the nearby Nogalera gasoline storage facility._ Hmm, I suspect I can see where this might be going ...

In the bonus fact, did you mean to say 1500 whilst writing 15,000?