{"id":677,"date":"2006-02-09T09:26:28","date_gmt":"2006-02-09T17:26:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2006\/02\/technology_is_cool.html"},"modified":"2006-02-09T09:26:28","modified_gmt":"2006-02-09T17:26:28","slug":"technology_is_c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/02\/technology_is_c.html","title":{"rendered":"Technology Is Cool"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s not until the power goes out do you realize just how important electricity is<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A sewage treatment plant in Harlem nearly exploded into a “catastrophic” fireball during the 2003 blackout — a disaster only averted by a city worker armed with an old broomstick, new records show.<\/p>\n

The dangerous near disaster, never revealed by the city, was detailed this week in federal court documents as part of a plea agreement with the city’s Department of Environmental Protection.<\/p>\n

Under the deal, the DEP admitted that it failed to maintain backup generators at a sewage treatment plant in Red Hook, Brooklyn — causing some 30 million gallons of raw sewage to dump into the East River during the August 2003 blackout.<\/p>\n

But records also show that DEP screwups at another plant, the North River Wastewater Treatment Plant between 137th and 145th Sts. on the Hudson River in Harlem, nearly caused a huge fireball that could have threatened nearby homes.<\/p>\n

“We have been advised,” wrote U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia in a memo to the court last month, “that this situation created the risk of a catastrophic explosion near a residential neighborhood.”<\/p>\n

Garcia’s investigators concluded that when the blackout hit, the lack of working generators at North River caused a flame that safely burns methane gas at the plant to go out, much like a pilot light going out inside a boiler.<\/p>\n

With the burner extinguished, methane gas slowly built up — creating a time bomb that was defused only after “a DEP employee, at considerable risk to himself,” lit an old broomstick and reignited the burner, records show.<\/p>\n

The actions of the employee — who was not identified in court papers or by the DEP yesterday — assured that “excess gas could be burned off and an explosion avoided,” Garcia concluded.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s not until the power goes out do you realize just how important electricity is: A sewage treatment plant in Harlem nearly exploded into a “catastrophic” fireball during the 2003 blackout — a disaster only averted by a city worker armed with an old broomstick, new records show. The dangerous near disaster, never revealed by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-youre_kidding_right"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677","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=677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}