Intro

I’ve been finanny trusted again with a sponsorship, more about that later on..... If I described to you how this lake became virtually empty without photographic proof you’d think This video was some kind of an early April fools episode. This subject has been on my to cover list and regularly is suggested to me, but I’ve always put off doing it as I felt that I might not be able to do it justice. You see I find mines impossibly fascinating, in that the amount of engineering skill required to dig into the earth to find rare and raw materials, but I’ve always found it difficult to explain the vastness of the labyrinthine scale of some operations. But I realised that today’s disaster actually works to show just how much space even a modest mine takes up. So much space in fact that a drilling accident would inundate the Jefferson island mine causing most of a lake to just disappear in 1980. Thus my issue with mining subjects and the lake pagnier disaster seem to have solved themselves. My name is John and welcome to plainly difficult today we are looking at the Jefferson island mine inundation, better known as the lake peigneur disaster.

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Background

Background As is customary on one of my videos we must set the scene and understand the historical context of today’s subject. We start many years before 1980 in 1894, with an actor hiring a contractor to attempt to drill a well near his home in Louisiana. He was called Joseph Jefferson, in his day he was a noted actor and had purchased an island to live on 12 miles west of New Iberia , Iberia Parish, along the shore of the freshwater 1,300 acre lake peigneur. As an interesting side note Jefferson was an acquaintance of both actor John Wilkes booth and the man he killed president Abraham Lincoln. He had built his home around 1870 before his ownership it had the name orange island. His name was given to the island, upon beginning the drilling for his new well his contractors reported discovering rock salt at roughly 300ft during the summer of 1895. The contractors continued to drill down to a depth of about 2,000ft, frustratingly they were still encountering rock salt but this would be a potentially profitable discovery. You see salt is valuable and it was known to exist around the lake, the 5 islands in the area of which Jefferson was one were actually salt domes with a rock cap, now the islands aren’t actually islands instead just high spots of land. Jefferson would die in 1905 and just over 10 years later the island would begin to be exploited for its valuable salt below. In July of 1919 two men drilled multiple holes over the island to map the salt dome. In October of 1919 , Jones and Bayless, the men who had investigated the island in June organized the Jefferson Island Salt Mining Company. After a failed attempt to dig out a shaft in 1919 the company attempted to dig a second shaft but issues with water ingress would delay the project by another 2 years. Over the coming years the operation grew making use of a pillar and chamber method of excavation. This method is very common in the industry and involves mining a grid pattern leaving pillars behind supporting the mine's roof. Initially the complex of tunnels were made up of an 800ft deep level, and by the 1930s production had boomed to over 200,000 tons per year. The chambers were 90ft high by 75ft wide. The mine was extended with a new level 1000ft deep with an incline in 1940. Instead of chamber and pillar a shrinkage method was used on this level, with the salt mined in horizontal slices from bottom to top. The remaining chambers on the 1000ft level were 100ft high by 65ft and were lined up below the chambers of the 800ft level. In 1957 the mine was sold to the diamond Crystal salt company, and operations continued. The mine was extended with a 1300 feet deep level and an air shaft in the early 1960s. And in the 1970s a 1500 ft level was added. As the 1970s came to a close the mine had a roughly 290 strong complement of staff, the site worked 3 8 hour shifts per day 7 days a week. The extracted Salt was transported away from the lake via barge along the Delcambre Canal , and the Intercoastal Waterway. But the diamond salt crystal mining company wasn't the only show in town when it came to digging around lake paignuer. And here we are introduced to the other participant in our story and you’ll probably know this name. Texaco had been exploiting the areas oil and gas reserves, as such multiple rigs peppered the land around the lake, but as we all Know it’s never enough. Texaco was looking to expand operations in the area during the 1980s and the only way to find new oil reserves is to get your drill out! Ok not that type of drill. Texaco acquired a licence from the state covering an area encompassing the entire lake pagneiur. The company's mode of operation was to contract smaller local drilling outfits to do the labour intensive work, with Texaco handling project oversight, well planning and licence acquisition. After it got licence 124 in 1980 texaco contracted two companies Wilson Drilling Corporation and Grafton Drilling Co. of New Iberia to drill two exploratory wells named P-20 and no.35 respectively. Both these wells were located close to the Crystal salt mine, with P-20 on the lake around 2100 feet from the mines main shaft entrance, and no.35 1200ft south east 400ft inland from the lakes shore. The plan was to drill down 8,000ft on both wells, but although to similar depths the wells had a pretty important difference, p-20 was on the lake thus needing all support for it to be waterborne. No.35 was on land so it was much easier to supply via road with trucks. P-20s location had been surveyed and staked out in October 1979, an allowable maximum amount of relocation east or west was set to be 150ft without any obstruction. Due to the limitations of drilling on the lake because of the channel leading to it meant floating rigs couldn’t be employed, instead a land based drilling rig was modified for the job. The route to the proposed well along the lake bed was dredged and pilings were driven to form a base for the rig in June 1980. The Wilson Drilling Corporation in November 1980 began installing their rig at the well site this installation called no.1 could drill down 12,000 feet. The crews scheduled to work on the new well would do a 12 hour shift followed by 24 hours rest period on land, this was overseen by tool pusher who lived and worked on the rod for a 4day on off rota. Multiple crews manned the rig on their 12 hours shifts forming 24hours of constant drilling. This was overseen by a Wilson supervisor who was also overseen by a texaco foreman who would do 7 days on and 7 days off, there were two of them and they made all important decisions. By the 18th of November the well was nearly ready to be drilled; a 16inch conductor pipe had been driven into the lake bed the day before.

Drilling Begins

Drilling begins Day 1 of drilling began at 6pm on the 18th of November and was to run for 12 hours to 6am on the 19th. Initially all went well in this first shift, 61 feet per hour was drilled for the first 10 and a half hours. At a depth just short of 500ft a survey was made and it was found their work was within 1 degree of being perfectly vertical. By the next shift book on at 1800 hours on the 19th of November the hole was at around 900ft deep, with both mud pumps working, progress seemed pretty good. But not for long, pump no1s clutch burnt out neasicitaing drilling operations to slow down. At 1090ft another survey was undertaken and it was found to be 0.5degree off vertical, at 1248 ft the rig would encounter another problem, their drill had become stuck. Just before 5am the texaco drill foreman was woken up and the issue with the drill was reported to him. The crew tried to rotate, lift and drop the drill but no movement was seen, the foreman told the crew to increase the thickness of the mud. As a side note drilling mud helps with drilling efforts and also helps remove the drilled material from the hole. By now both pumps were working again and they pumped the thicker mud which then increased the pressure in the hole. The load indicator started to show a heavier weight than the 78,000lbs on the drill bit, it climbed to 240,000 lbs the wire on the bit was slackened off dropping it to a much more acceptable 40,000 lbs. This relief was short lived as the weight climbed again to over 100,000 lbs. The next crew took over at 0545 and not long after a rather worrying sound rumbled from the rig, much to the confusion of the crew the weight of the drillbit rose further to a massive 400,000 lbs aka the weight of doughnuts I would like to eat in one go. The confusion would move over to worry as the rig began to tilt, texaco and the drill company Wilson’s were notified of the now bizarre situation. Both companies decided on an attempt to level the rig; apparently it’s not uncommon for the pilings to slip, thus making a platform uneven. The rig continued to lean, seeing this as definitely not normal, the foreman ordered all the crew to abandon the platform. The crew cut loose the barges that were moored to the rig in an effort to save the equipment aboard. At roughly 0725 the rig overturned and began to sink. Eye witnesses were shocked to see the rig completely disappear below the water, something that shouldn’t be even possible as the lake at its deepest point was only 12ft. Where did it go you might think? Well....

The Disaster

The mine inundation Whilst the leaning rig was being abandoned, miners at the Crystal salt mine were just beginning their shift. Obviously they didn’t know about the impending disaster that would interfere with their shifts plans. 48 workers were onsite and leading up to 8am they were spreading out amongst the various levels of the mine. On the 1300ft level worker JuniusGaddison was collecting electrical equipment. He noticed something no one in a mine wants to see, a 2ft high torrent of water approaching him. He raised the alarm and evacuation of the mine began with men being hoisted to the surface in the lift. Wilfred Johnson, on the 1500ft level went up to the 1300ft level to investigate the water but was soon forced to escape by the ever increasing water. The evacuation went pretty smoothly with one of the foramen using a truck to pick up workers in the deeper more extreme regions of the mine by 0900 everyone was clear from the mine. It was an absolute miracle that no one in the mine or on the rig lost their lives. But although no one was lost, a whole lake was going to have a go at disappearing. A 1⁄4 mile wide whirlpool formed over the rough location of where the rig was, it sucked a tugboat, a string of barges , and two Texaco oil rigs into the abyss of water . Two boaters on the lake managed to power their boat to shore, just showing again the sheer luck of all involved. Over the next 3 hours the entire lake disappeared into the mine, usually the lake fed the Delcambre Canal to the Vermillion Bay eventually heading to the gulf of Mexico. But during the disaster the flow was reversed taking water from the sea and filling back into the lake, this went on for several days. The air shaft became a mud cannon as the water pushed out all air from the mine, showing the surrounding area with thick muddy water. Nearby residents were evacuated and. Personnel from the Iberia Parish Sheriff's office , the Louisiana State Police , the Vermillion Parish Sheriff's Office , Delcambre Police , and The State Wildlife and Fisheries Department was drafted in to help with a growing amount of people becoming displaced. Eventually the water pressure would equalize, and of the 11 barges that had dissared in the whirlpool 7 returned to the surface. As an interesting side effect, the salt content of the lake actually increased, but not from the mine, but actually the back filling of sea water from the gulf, this would change the local ecosystem.

Aftermath

Aftermath Now although no one died, three dogs were reported killed, but the big question was how did a well established mine get breached by a pretty well established drilling company. Clearly something went wrong. We can likely rule out coniencedence as the drill on the rig got stuck between a 1200 and a 1300ft deep, funnily enough it was the 1300 ft level of the mine that failed. The timeline of the rig sinking and the inundation also match up fairly closely. Clearly the two events are one. Interestingly the mine had been suffering subsidence for at least 10 years leading up to the inundation. The instability of the mine was being actively monitored, assuming the maps were correct and texaco was drilling in the correct location, disaster still could have resulted, because you don’t even need to physically Pierce the mine, just weakening an area around it is enough to cause structural failure. Like if you went to the beach and tried to dig a hole in the wet sands the sides just keep on crumbling. The 1981 report into the incident did stop short of giving the actual cause, mainly due to all the evidence being sucked into a massive hole. But subsequent information hints that texaco had Miss read the charts taking the transverse Mercator projection coordinates for universal transverse Mercator coordinates, understandable we’ve all been there. This seems like the likely cause as they were not expecting to have to dig into the salt dome, which was the same thing the drill bit got lodged into. Although no official blame was put on texaco, we can guess this was the widely accepted cause as the company would be the one to stick their hands in their pocket. And they must have been deeper pockets than mine as the contractor Wilson brothers and texaco paid out 32million dollars to the Crystal salt morning company as well as 14 million to a local botanical garden which was also damaged in the inundation. This was refreshing doing a video with no mass human loss of life, but never fear next week we will be back to our usual programming of death and destruction. https://books.google.co.uk/books?vid=UCSD:31822029061140&redir_esc=y