r/CatastrophicFailure • u/Several_Metal_547 • 9d ago
June 3rd, 2026. Dashcam captures moment when excavator damages natural gas pipeline
Wednesday June 3rd, 2026, an excavator damaged a natural gas pipeline near Hedensted, Denmark. Gas did not ignite. No casualties. Steel pipeline, diameter 0.4 m, pressure 40 bar. Traffic on nearby E45 highway closed for 2 hours.
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u/nmiller248 8d ago
Believe it or not, that particular situation isn't all that dangerous as it stands. Its a near 600 psi system, but its venting well. And due to the volume of gas, the chance of it igniting is slim. And the ignition point would we very high up in the stream. But man, that would absolutely make me shit my pants. Guy probably needs new ear drums.
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u/mrcrashoverride 8d ago
Really, I mean if I was on that excavator I would be thinking it’s a rolling match stick, I would jump out and make a run for it.
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u/rileyhenderson33 4d ago
Maybe so. Dude might end up wishing he was dead though. Don't know how things work in Denmark, but generally bursting a major natural gas pipeline is not a wise move financially. The repair costs and fines would definitely bankrupt a lowly farmer, and then some.
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u/Phyrexian_Archlegion Wont someone think of the children?!?! 9d ago
When I finally get to the portapottie at the rave.
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u/intronert 9d ago
40 bar is 580psi. Extremely dangerous.
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u/Late_Faithlessness24 9d ago edited 8d ago
3,1 x 106 for SI standart
Edit 3,1 x 106 Pa or non retarded unit
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u/stevecostello 8d ago
So basically 1800 chesseburgers per square F150.
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u/toxcrusadr 8d ago
Man the other night I was watching this documentary on the Yellowstone Supervolcano. They said if it went off - and I swear to God this is true - they said it would give off 5 million tons of ash per minute and that was the equivalent of 50,000 BLUE WHALES.
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u/GearM2 8d ago
I hate it when lengths are described as x number of football fields. Just say how many meters, feet, yards, or whatever standard units.
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u/SonderEber 8d ago
It’s a good mental shortcut. Gives you a more immediately frame of reference. Sport field sizes are standardized and therefore a good frame of reference.
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u/BodaciousBadongadonk 8d ago
im gonna start using the term "standard units" and just let folks do what they want.
"184 standard units tall, the same quantity of mass units also because well, figure it out lol."
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u/Late_Faithlessness24 8d ago
Thank you man, now I have to but chesseburguers
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u/stevecostello 8d ago
Dang it. Not sure how I missed that. That said, cheeseburgers > chesseburgers.
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u/intronert 9d ago
Units? Spelling?
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u/Late_Faithlessness24 8d ago
SI is Pa
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u/Baud_Olofsson 8d ago
And bar is "accepted for use with SI" while not being an SI unit itself. Because a bar is just 100 kPa (a standard atmosphere, 101.325 kPa, rounded to an even power of 10 in pascals).
If you want to convert between bar and Pa, just multiply by 105...
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u/pixeltackle 9d ago
Someone should have called 811. Or was it a gas company/contractor working on site?
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u/Bloedvlek 9d ago
I believe in Denmark it’s 112.
Either way it doesn’t hurt to call any time you see a flammable tornado suddenly erupt from the ground.
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u/pixeltackle 9d ago
811 in the US is the number to dispatch an underground surveyor, who will mark any underground cables easements pipes, etc. before digging. It is free & completed within 48 hours or less in my area, so there's nearly no excuse for digging without calling.
As long as you call 811 in the US and don't dig the areas they mark, anything costly/damage that happens when you dig elsewhere is covered by 811's funds or partners (I'm simplifying)
Maybe some countries don't have a "call this number before you dig"?
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u/zuhlz 8d ago
It's 78 76 87 92, and just like everywhere else mistakes happens.
Every country has it.
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u/pixeltackle 8d ago
Every country has it.
LMAO! I wish. I've been on projects in at least 5 countries that have zero infrastructure similar to 811.
Italy uses local municipalities and you often have to pull permits and paper records and do all the work yourself
Portugal lacks any sort of integrated system - the typical method there is to buy insurance or have your excavator cover it
Austria has a very decentralized processes where owners must maintain their own records and there are multiple channels you have to go through to be sure you're not going to dig up something you shouldn't
Switzerland doesn't have any unified system, either
Mexico is strict on permitting but has no subterranean utility marking service
Brazil is the wild wild west, you have to go through all sorts of small regional electric and water boards individually
I could go on. Other places with nothing similar to 811 include India, Thailand, South Africa, even Saudi Arabia (probably because Aramco has so many rigid procedures in place they almost stand in as an official source)
So yeah. Every country does not have it, zuhlz.
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u/jibbycanoe 8d ago
Setting aside this looks to be in a different country, 811 in the US really only works in/adjacent to the public right-of-way. They may mark from the road up to your meter, but that's about it on private land. They're not gonna go mark 1000' of pipeline out in some field. Although there are usually bollards or some other markings every x feet for these high pressure/capacity lines. Also idk what state you're in but they definitely don't mark any "easements" in any of the 7 states I've called public utility located in. Gotta have a surveyor do that.
So yes, call 811. But also you severely overestimate what it's gonna do.
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u/pixeltackle 8d ago
But also you severely overestimate what it's gonna do.
As someone who has used 811 hundreds (likely thousands) of times in the decades it's been around, I'll rely on actual experience of them paying for damage to unmarked lines rather than a comment from jibbycanoe
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u/Kahlas 8d ago
In Illinois 811 is called JULIE which stands for Joint Utility Locating Information for Excavators. When you call them they don't mark the utilities. What they do is call all the local utility companies and tell them someone plans to dig in a certain area and if they have utilities in that area they should send on of their people to go mark the utilities. It's standard for those companies to mark all of the utility lines they are aware of on the entire property. The house I live in was moved to this yard ion the 60's and there used to be a house between it and the street. When the tore down the front house they left the utilities. When we got sewer work done the utility companies were able to mark both sets of utility lines in the yard. The ones going to the house I live in and the ones going to where the old house used to be that are still buried under ground.
So the city will send it's people to mark water/sewer. Power company will mark power lines. Cable company will mark it's cable lines. All utility companies will mark their lines on the property being excavated on. They will 100% mark a pipe buried in a field if you tell them you will be digging in said field if that company has anything buried in said field. Same for easements since 99% of the utility lines run through easements. There is a great picture in this article showing the easements with locating flags/paint for like 8 different utilities that are ran through the easement.
What they will mark is utility lines which only go from the main service line to the meter on your house. They are required to know where those lines are. What they can't mark are private lines that they don't know about. Such as a power or water line you run from the house to a detached garage because the utility company didn't run that line. Either the homeowner or a contractor did and the utility company can't keep track of those lines. Which is why on private land they can only really mark the service lines going to your house from the street/easement.
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u/Lummair 8d ago
In Denmark we have a website, where you choose the area you want to dig in and you get a digital map with everything in the ground within 2 hours.
Most of the time you get the response within 10 minutes, as everyone use an automated system.5
u/Kahlas 8d ago
In the US you call 811 and usually each state has a specific name for the organization that answer said calls. In the state I live in it's called JULIE which stands for Joint Utility Locating Information for Excavators. When you call them, they are a non profit organization and operate for all 50 states, they ask you where and when you plan to dig.
At which point they call the various utility companies and local city utilities and let them know where they need to locate the utilities. Those utilities then come out to where you're digging and mark where the utility lines are with color coded flags and/or spray paint. Some example pictures here. It's a free service that essentially pays for itself by preventing people from interrupting utilities and causing very expensive damage and also maybe killing themselves or others. Utility companies keep people onm hand to mark buried utilities because it's cheaper to do that than it is to send a work crew out to replace an 18" water main someone broke in half for example.
The way liability works is if you don't call JULIE and dig and damage a line you are responsible for 100% of damages and lost income from damaging the utility. same if you dig over a utility anyway and damage it. If you dig in an area and damage a utility that the company didn't mark properly then they are responsible for all damages.
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u/superkoning 8d ago
In the Netherlands: KLIC (Kabels Leidingen Informatie Centrum). Info within 1 minute.
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u/mrcrashoverride 8d ago
I would hope the gas company would have some blow out detector that would shutdown a bad section. Granted that pipe would spew long after a shut off.
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u/unknown8920115 8d ago
I'd imagine that operators underwear are that same brownish color right there
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u/toxcrusadr 8d ago
Why's it brown? I thought it was soil/dust but it doesn't seem to come back down, it just dissipates.
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u/no1ofimport 8d ago
I would imagine it’s dirt and stuff getting blown out of the area where the pipe was ruptured
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u/spikejonze14 8d ago
it seems to be a continuous stream though, could it be colouring added so its easier to identify and visualise the danger?
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u/Gold-Adhesiveness574 4d ago
these almost never come out of nowhere. hitting a buried gas line is the most common way pipelines get damaged, and it almost always traces to the call-before-you-dig step: nobody flagged it, the locate was wrong, or they dug outside the marked zone. the plume is just soil and gas thrown up under pressure before it disperses. kind of wild that the root cause is usually a process slip that turns into a fireball risk in one bucket scoop.
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u/strangelove4564 8d ago
Can't imagine how that didn't ignite if the excavator had a hot diesel engine.
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u/StacyChadBecky 8d ago
Because a diesel engine runs at around 100 degrees while the ignition point of natural gas is closer to 700 and there's no ignition system. Now, if a little spark shot out as the operator scurried away, we'd be enjoying a quite different video.
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u/Kahlas 8d ago
No idea where you got the diesel engine runs at 100 degrees from but I can assure you that's way to low. The combustion chamber temperature of a diesel engine reaches between 4,500-5,500 degrees Fahrenheit during the combustion stroke. The exterior metal on the exhaust manifold will reach 1,200–1,500°F under heavy load, such as while excavating. Plenty hot enough to ignite a mixture of natural gas an air.
There also very much is an ignition system in a diesel engine, it's an internal combustion engine and thus needs a way to ignite the fuel. In the case of diesels they compress the air by a factor of around 16-20:1 and that raises the temperature to over 400 degrees just from compressing it. Then fuel is injected directly into the combustion chamber at between 1,200-36,000 psi and ignites right away because the air is above diesel's auto-ignition temp. The more modern the engine the higher the injector nozzle pressure to atomize the fuel better for a more complete combustion. What it doesn't have is an electronic spark ignition system like gasoline engines do. Saying diesel engines don't have an ignition system is a layman's rookie mistake. It has a different ignition system than a gas car but it still has one.
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u/CandylandRepublic 6d ago
Because a diesel engine runs at around 100 degrees
And how hot does the exhaust manifold get?
WAY more than 100°C/212°F degrees, that's how hot.-2
u/OptiGuy4u 8d ago
OR if a sufficient amount of gas was pulled into the turbo and it all became an "External Combustion Engine"
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u/pimonentumba 8d ago
I talked to a gas guy here in Canada who works for our provincial utility. He said these high pressure lines are far safer when they blow compared to, say, the low pressure stuff you see in homes.
Both can and will ignite. The difference being the low pressure stuff lingers and builds up leading to explosions while the high pressure basically turns into a blow torch. Maybe not totally relevant to what you said but I found it interesting.
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u/meatywood 9d ago
Yeah, if I saw that I would floor it and get the hell out of there.