Flashback 1980 - The Lake Peigneur Swirling Vortex of Doom

[DMac]

Pretty cool footage:


Flashback to Thursday, November 21, 1980. This day may seem of little importance to many. However, if you were living near New Iberia, Louisiana, you will probably never be able to forget the strange series of events that took place on this date in history.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8rg5I1Ceto

"If there's one lesson to take from this strange engineering disaster, is that a small mistake can have huge consequences.

[k-os]

What the heck?

That is a very interesting piece of history.

I like how they blame it on a drill bit. I'm going to say it was a communication error. Drilling in a shallow lake where just below they are mining salt - let's just try one at a time, fellas.

I wonder where the two barges went. Bizarre.

[Johnny Ringo]

Wow. Just amazing. You'd think anyone that passed middle school science would understand those physics. Then again, humans seem reluctant to respect the force that H2O has when under the influence of gravity.

I was living in Alexandria, LA at the time, and I don't remember anything about it. Makes you think about how inundated and saturated we are with news today. Back then, if you didn't catch it on the 10 o'clock news or on page 3 of the paper, you never knew about it. Today, you'd see replays every 10 minutes on the 20 or so news channels they have - not to mention the internet.