Tremors felt 45 miles away from Bayou Corne Sinkhole!

reply to post by CajunBoy


Good luck...with all the methane reported....

Peace

reply to post by CajunBoy


The Bayou Corne facebook page reports that it was a flare burning at the Crosstex facility.

I hope that's all that it was.

I have not noticed this being mentioned before only the flyover video. Anyway, I see someone has posted a series of 9 youtubes on the public Meeting held on the 17th. For me, part 2 has a different format and my browser wont display it. What do I need to display this? The others are OK as .flv files

Public Meeting 17 Sep 2013 Youtube part 1
Part 1

Public Meeting 17 Sep 2013 Youtube part 2
Part 2

Public Meeting 17 Sep 2013 Youtube part 3
Part 3

Public Meeting 17 Sep 2013 Youtube Part 4
Part 4

Public Meeting 17 Sep 2013 Youtube Part 5
Part 5

Public Meeting 17 Sep 2013 Youtube Part 6
Part 6

Public Meeting 17 Sep 2013 Youtube Part 7
Part 7

Public Meeting 17 Sep 2013 Youtube Part 8
Part 8

Public Meeting 17 Sep 2013 Youtube Part 9
Part 9

It's been quiet in this thread.

This is the most recent flyover, from 15 October 2013:


They have removed seismic stations LA 15 & 16, but added LA 19 & 21. This .PDF link shows the location of the seismometers.
You can access the webicorders from CERI, here.

On the 17th of October entry on the Assumption Parish blog they indicate additional borehole seismometers will be installed East of Oxy-Geismar #3, directly in the salt.

Local displaced residents and volunteers from Baton Rouge have been catching, spaying/neutering, administering 3-year rabies vaccines, and returning to their found locations, stray and abandoned cats.
Kudos! (insert big thumb up emoticon here)

Finally, from the Bayou Corne facebook entry dated 7 October:

-93 settlement offers were approved by the insurance carrier for delivery to affected residents
-92 offers were delivered
-90 responses from residents were received
-65 offers were accepted
-38 of the 65 closings have taken place as of October 2nd"

Link to the data quoted, found in a Texas Brine fact sheet

At least some people are finally being compensated.

Thanks for the update.

Apparently things have been quiet there for a while. But with the water flow through the salt dome caverns I fully expect it to get bad again but who knows when???? And then you have all that methane and hydrogen sulfide bubbling up in the water and through the ground. Maybe CajunBoy can give us a boots on the ground update.

They obviously think things are growing at the sinkhole since they are installing these new seizmometers(?) and taking out the others which (I assume) have died.
What local news on the sinkhole? Have they done any further depth soundings or anything like that? I get the impression that things have gone quiet but maybe that is just 'cos this thread has become quiet too perhaps?

This was an active week at the sink hole.

Wednesday, Oct. 23 work- Sinkhole Activity Code 2 – indicating no work is allowed directly on sinkhole, elevated due to seismic monitoring indicating trend of increased MEQ (micro-earthquake) activity near sinkhole/Oxy 3

Actually no work was allowed Monday or Tuesday either.

There is a meeting tomorrow so we should get some news. Also from Mondays news:

Texas Brine advised that the tagging of Cavern 3 is at 4,097′ which is 75′ lower than last week’s tag. As information becomes available, it will be shared here.

It was lower??? Well something is going to have to fill that void so it will be interesting to see what happens in the next few days.

Also- allegedly there was a slough in today but no news reports yet.

Also- from the Bayou Corne FB page:

Measure are being taken to start venting the gas below the subdivision, Sportsmans Paradise, on Sportsmans Drive. It is reported that there is an approx. 10 foot thick layer of gas, holding approximately 8 million cubic feet of gas at a depth of 120 feet under these homes, with the high spot on the lot next to my lot.

I guess methane has not been detected in the homes but there is major gas under them.

reply to post by AuntB


Thanks for the updates AuntB.

All that gas...Can you imagine if folks were still living in that neighborhood, and unbeknownst to anyone that gas had found a pathway to the surface? Any neighbor firing up their grill or cigarette could have been a catastrophe.

Thank goodness there have no losses of life.

There was a lot of activitity this morning. I don't think it was drilling. HERE

Whatever was going on it has settled down but the 5 o'clock hours was quite active.

Flyover yesterday. I know it is fall but there are quite a few dead trees.

reply to post by AuntB


So auntie bee, what is your take on the relative quiet at the sinkhole in the last month or so????

reply to post by AuntB


You weren't kidding...that was a whole lot of microquakes. Looking at the helicorders, they are still happening every few hours.
It appears that all this cracking has done some damage. From October 26th on the police jury blog:

A crack has developed on the South Berm, south/southwest of pad 3. There is also increased seismic activity occurring. We will continue to monitor the south berm and sinkhole for any changes and will update accordingly.

ETA: Is anybody locally reporting feeling the earthquakes? Just watching in GEE for a few minutes, these EQ's seem like they may be reaching the mag 2.0 range or slightly larger.

(Or my interpretation of the amplitudes could be way off. USGS has never listed any of the earthquakes generated by the sinkhole collapse, so I don't have a solid reference for the local area--I'm just comparing these waveforms to similarly sized ones from southern CA for a magnitude guesstimate. )

happykat39
reply to post by AuntB

 

So auntie bee, what is your take on the relative quiet at the sinkhole in the last month or so????

Well as Olivine pointed out things are no longer quiet. The bayou is jumping. Something is going to happen. As we have seen, the sinkhole does tend to go silent then gives us a spectacular burp or slough in. I think we are going to see something in the next week or so. The past week things have been shaking and since it is affecting the berms, I think we are going to see an expansion. I did notice this morning that LA 17 is quieter then it was last week. LA 13, 14 are active but it could be work on the crumbling berm, but I don't think that is all work we are seeing.

Olivine
reply to post by AuntB

 

ETA: Is anybody locally reporting feeling the earthquakes? Just watching in GEE for a few minutes, these EQ's seem like they may be reaching the mag 2.0 range or slightly larger.

Our Cajun hasn't been on in about a month. I am hoping that he will pop in and give us a report. Even my favorite Youtuber on the subject- rainbeaudais has been quiet. They are having a feral cat issue in the area but other then that no real news.

PS- does anyone know where to find an up-dated bubbling site map. TB mentioned site 47 and monitoring it. i would like to know where 47 is located.

AuntB

PS- does anyone know where to find an up-dated bubbling site map. TB mentioned site 47 and monitoring it. i would like to know where 47 is located.

edit on 27-10-2013 by AuntB because: PS added

I've been searching & can't find a recent map with numbered sites above #36???

In the most recent (warning -- 71 page, .pdf) Operational Summary, 25 October 2013 it says the DPEV-47 pilot test is "west of the containment berm". Not much help, eh.

That same summary also had this to say about micro quake activity:

There were ~109 MEQs yesterday and more than 44 MEQs since midnight. There was a period of intense MEQ activity between 05:45 and 06:30
this morning. The MEQ rate is still high at this time. (10/25)

The police jury blog had an update yesterday, but gave no new information regarding the crack on the south berm. It did however have this one liner:

Placing additional tiltmeter equipment near Texas Brine facility brine tanks to monitor for potential movement

I wondered if the sinkhole would ever expand far enough to bother those tanks. Here is a pic of what they are referring to:

Photo is a cropped version of the newest seismic station map, found here.

The "microquakes" are continuing. I wish CERI, nanometrics, anybody would show a location and magnitude map for these quakes. One of them yesterday, was over 500 microns/sec (amplitude in GEE) at LA12. Granted the instruments are directly over the hypocenters, but still, they are becoming stronger.

Lots of updates regarding the past 10 days of seismic unrest at the sinkhole can be found on the Assumption Parish blog. Here is a snippet:

October 30,2013
9:05 a.m. Update
Statement from Texas Brine:

As reported on the Parish Blog, some cracking was observed over the weekend on portions of the South Berm. Currently there is one main crack that is approximately 3.5″ wide that crosses the South Berm with some additional smaller cracks also appearing in proximity to this location. The Geotextile liner and clay cap remain unbroken ensuring the barrier between the sinkhole and outside environment remains intact.

...and this...

4:55 p.m. Update
A second crack has been discovered on the South Berm toward the western corner. Although this crack doesn’t go all the way across the berm, we will continue to monitor all these areas for continued changes.

They also uploaded the latest flyover on the 28th of October.

I do wonder if I am being an alarmist but I feel all these microquakes will be having a result. The berm has cracked in two places and they are monitoring those tanks. I know that they don't tell us everything but I do wonder what is really going on.

This is an interesting article for those that haven't been following the sinkhole. The video is good and I noted towards the end when they do the flyover that there are many dead trees on the other side of the berm- almost headed towards the homes.

The sinkhole that swallowed a swamp

3-5 years to get rid of the gas... nature is slow.

reply to post by AuntB

I found 2 more articles that everyone interested in the sinkhole should read. The imbedded videos do a good job of putting the human impact in perspective. Those poor residents/evacuees....they are in complete limbo.

This 1st news piece is dated the 29th of October. Crack in Bayou Corne sinkhole berm
This excerpt is from the end of the piece:

The company is working on a contingency plan to repair the berm. Cartwright says it might include building another one south of the site.

This is the more recent news article and video posted yesterday.

John Boudreaux is in this video. He states that they can't give a true account of the size of the sinkhole, because they no longer survey the eastern side. It is too unsafe.
I wondered why the last map released didn't have data points on that side. At the time the authorities said it was due to flooding.
Factor in the tiltmeters they were installing this past week, and it sounds like the sinkhole may be expanding over the salt dome.

As you said AuntB, it will take years to play out--geology is a slow process.