April 3 2000~ Man holes Fires in SanFrancisco creates Trafic havoc. Unknown cause. Anyone have any MORE INFO~~ Geno

-- Gene Snyder (headturbo@hotmail.com), April 05, 2000

Answers

Try checking on the exploding manhole stories from Georgetown DC area @ new years - their story was road salt for snow draining into manholes and getting on copper and exploding - remember one board pundit trying to pour salt on a penny and nothing happened. Guess the best question is, do you use a lot of road salt in SF? If not maybe the symptoms are the same and the road salt explanation was off a little...

-- Patter is full (flyby@tower.com), April 05, 2000.

it happened in boston too

-- n (n@n.n), April 05, 2000.

The salt in question lowered the freezing point of the ice/snow as it was supposed to. However, when dissolved in water solution , it can attack the cables carrying the electricity (probably for years) and then when in contact with copper cable , would make a beautiful conducting solution between those cables and ANY metal that would ground it. Also, depending on the type of metals involved , hydrogen gas could have formed , until the oxygen/hydrogen gases reached the correct chemical combination of two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen ; then all you need is a spark/open flame to form water PLUS lots of heat and light .... like in an explosion ( technically known as an exothermic reaction) ; i.e. one that gives off LOTS of HEAT !! Eagle

-- Hal Walker (e999eagle@freewwweb.com), April 05, 2000.

So this is a recurring thing in history as opposed to SCADA related...?

-- I.B. Edumacated (notso@sumb.com), April 05, 2000.

Roger, understand. Giving this dreadful explanation and credence it can muster, how many years of salted snowfallen roads in San Francisco would it take for this to happen - and still fit in with Boston and Georgetown weather patterns? Their manholes should have blown up years ago rather than at the same year that SF did. It is interesting that they all never occurred before and did happen after Y2K...

-- Pattern is full (flyby@tower.com), April 05, 2000.

I.B., What is SCADA, please?

-- Margo (margos@bigisland.com), April 05, 2000.

Supervisory Control and Data Acquistion

-- I.B. Edumacated (notso@sumb.com), April 05, 2000.

Local news provided by: Metro Networks

Streets Back To Normal It should be business as usual this morning on Mason and O'Farrell streets near San Francisco's Union Square. But that wasn't the case yesterday morning as fire broke out in an underground Pacific Gas and Electric transformer vault. Smoke could be seen, but the flames were underground making it tough for firefighters. Investigators say the blaze was probably caused by a short circuit. The biggest danger came from underground explosions that blew out manhole covers. Luckily, nobody was injured.

SAN FRANCISCO

http://home.digitalcity.com/sanfrancisco/news/article.dci? provider=metronetworks&category=News&article=443519

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), April 05, 2000.