{"id":2525,"date":"2007-07-20T10:43:16","date_gmt":"2007-07-20T18:43:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2007\/07\/with_friends_like_these_who_needs_terrorists.html"},"modified":"2007-07-20T10:43:16","modified_gmt":"2007-07-20T18:43:16","slug":"with_friends_li","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/07\/with_friends_li.html","title":{"rendered":"With Friends Like These Who Needs Terrorists?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It may not be terrorism<\/a>, but this failure of our infrastructure seems pretty serious<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Con Ed’s century-old underground steam system — including the pipe that exploded on Wednesday — is accident- and crisis-prone, with more than 300 reported emergencies in the last year and a growing number of failures in record-keeping and inspection, documents show.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

Three of the emergencies recorded in the last year were at or near the site of Wednesday’s blast. Exactly what happened on Aug. 16, Jan. 11 and April 5 couldn’t be determined yesterday. Neither Con Ed nor the PSC could elaborate on the reports.<\/p>\n

But some pipes near the blast site at Lexington Avenue and 41st Street needed repair. Street-opening permits filed with the city indicate Con Ed was trying to fix steam leaks near there right up to the day of the blast.<\/p>\n

Con Ed had a city permit that would have allowed the utility to work at the intersection between June 21 and July 22.<\/p>\n

The company had another permit to repair pipes in the area that would have let it dig into East 41st Street near Lexington Avenue from April 2 to April 29.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

The cause of the eruption was still under investigation yesterday, with experts citing several possibilities, including metal fatigue in the 83-year-old burst steam main or a sudden cooling of water inside the pipe caused by Wednesday’s rain.<\/p>\n

A consultant to Con Ed steam customers said a puddle of cool water inside the main seems the most likely culprit. Such a pool could be created if the pipe were cooled by rain from Wednesday’s storms, said the consultant, Steve Mosto.<\/p>\n

When that cool water collides with 360-degree steam, it heats up so quickly, it can cause an explosion, Mosto explained.<\/p>\n

Metal fatigue is also a possible factor in the catastrophe.<\/p>\n

“They are going to be looking at metal analysis to see how the pipe failed,” Mosto said.<\/p>\n

Con Ed touts its steam system as energy-efficient, and its 1,780 steam customers — mostly big buildings in Manhattan south of 96th Street — figure buying bulk steam is easier and cheaper than maintaining boiler and heating systems.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It may not be terrorism, but this failure of our infrastructure seems pretty serious: Con Ed’s century-old underground steam system — including the pipe that exploded on Wednesday — is accident- and crisis-prone, with more than 300 reported emergencies in the last year and a growing number of failures in record-keeping and inspection, documents show. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture_infrastructure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2525\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}