What the devil27:34Why a CO2 leak in Mississippi has lessons for Canada
At the beginning of the night of February 22, 2020, Debrae Burns was driving with his brother and his cousin along the highway 3 outside the city of Satartia, Miss., When they saw a nearby explosion.
“We returned from a fishing trip, and we really saw the fungal cloud. Just like an explosion, but without fire. It was just a great cloud of white in the air,” he said.
He suspected that he came from a nearby pipe that runs through the hills on Satartia. What I did not know was that instead of oil or natural gas, the compressed and liquefied carbon dioxide ran through the pipes.
The surrounding area was immediately flooded with the suffocating gas, which can be deadly in concentrated amounts because it displaces oxygen. Burns called his mother on the phone about the explosion. Seconds later, the motor of the car was off; Burns, his brother and his cousin passed out.
“My phone was still on. My name called me: Debrae, Debrae, Debrae. And I simply stopped speaking.”
No one died after that explosion of pipes in Mississippi, but the first to respond and residents say they should have known more about the risks to prepare better for possible emergencies.
With the main Canadian energy companies that advocate the construction of a CO2 pipe in Alberta, CBC went to Satartia to learn firsthand about possible risks when a CO2 pipe crosses a community.
Why a CO2 pipe?
Carbon dioxide can be transported through a pipe for multiple reasons. In the case of the pipe in Mississippi, it is for a process called improved oil recovery, where pumping CO2 in oil wells can help extract more oil.
In Canada, a consortium of the largest energy companies called Pathways Alliance is proposing a massive carbon dioxide pipe that, he says, would reduce the emissions of the production of oil sands in Alberta.
It would capture carbon dioxide emissions of more than 20 facilities of oil sands in northern Alberta and would transport them 400 kilometers away by pipes to be stored in a natural underground deposit in the cold area of the lake. CO2 would remain underground, with the aim of preventing emissions from entering the atmosphere.
The Alliance first proposed the project in 2022, but has not yet ended the agreements with federal and provincial governments on incentives and how it would be paid.
Capture and carbon storage (CCS) is considered part of the solution to reach net emissions worldwide, according to the International Energy Agency, and is a key part of the plans of oil companies to reduce emissions by a third of 2019 levels by 2030.
Critics, however, have compared CCS with a red herring on the climatic fight.
An opinion column of the New York Times of 2022 called “all dollars” spent on CCs “a waste” As the continuous production of gas and oil allows “disguise as climate change solutions”, instead of transition to cleaner energy sources.
The residents who live near where the proposed pipeline would be buried told Narval the past autumn that had concerns about possible leaks or ruptures, how could water, cultivation lands and indigenous treaties affect.
What happened in Mississippi?
Satartia, Miss., It is a small town not far from the Mississippi delta with about 50 residents, a main street, a grocery store, a town hall of a room and a handful of houses. A place said it is so flat in the Delta that you can see a dog flee for three days.
On the night of the explosion, some residents were outside of having a boil. Hugh (Bubba) Martin, an army veteran who lives in Satartia, did not hear that the pipe exploded on music and gas burners cooking the Rio crab. But then it detected a smell of rotten eggs filling the air.
Very soon, everyone struggled to stay aware.
“You were awake, but it was nothing registered. Only disoriented. Your brain was not working. I mean, everyone tried to disperse. Everyone passed out. The vehicles did not run,” he said.
Local emergency services were soon flooded with 911 calls that describe the smell of gas, people who pass out and cars stopped on the roads.
CO2 is toilet and colorless, but the locals told CBC that they believe that the smell came from hydrogen sulfide, or sour gas, which may have been mixed with CO2.
Jack Willingham, director of Emergency Management of Yazoo County, where Satartetia is located, said the lifeguards did not know what the problem was for at least the first 30 minutes. He said he didn’t even know that there was a CO2 pipe running for his county.
“At that particular moment [there] It was not much communication between us and the pipe operator that prepared us with what is happening, “he said.
A mysterious scene
Carbon dioxide is not dangerous in low doses. Humans exhale it every time we breathe. But at higher concentrations and in a fresh and cloudy climate, CO2 will not always disperse in the atmosphere. On the other hand, it will sit in an invisible cloud on the ground, displacing oxygen, which makes it more difficult or even impossible to breathe. Also stifling internal combustion engines, which means that many vehicles will not work.
That caused rescue operations in Satartia to be more difficult, since the first to respond fought to keep their vehicles in operation. Some had to enter the city on foot, with air masks and breathing tanks.
Jerry Briggs, firefighter and EMS coordinator of the neighboring neighboring County, said Satartia looked like a ghost city when his team arrived. Most of the residents had fled, but the responders still had to look for anyone behind.
“8:00 Saturday night. Lights on; TVS burning. Cars there; nobody [inside]. We find burning fires. No one around them, “he said.
Driving on the roads in search of victims, Briggs and the team discovered that most stagnant cars were empty. But one had three people: Debrae Burns, his brother and his cousin, all unconscious.
At first, Briggs thought they were dead, but soon realized that they were still breathing. The all -terrain utilitarian vehicle of the firefighters was too small, so the team awkwardly accumulated the three unconscious men on their equipment and the spare air tanks on the back.
“In the south, we would say that we carry them as deer, you know, after the deer hunt,” Briggs said. “I know it sounds horrible, but in retrospect, they would probably not survive.”
The firefighters took them to a safe place, and the trio was taken by paramedics to a hospital in the nearby Vicksburg.
“When they found us, for what I understand, we were foam in our mouths, just breathing,” said Burns. He remembered that they told him that if they had slept five more minutes before being found, they would not have survived.
Posterior and questions
Forty -five people required medical care in the hospital and more than 200 people were evacuated from the Syarcetia area. Officially, everyone recovered. But although he cannot try the bond, Burns believes that he is living with subsequent effects of the exhibition and the approximately three hours he believes that happened unconscious.
“I suffer from memory loss. You know, I have problems concentrating. I’m not close to many people. You know, it distinguishes me a lot from many things,” he said.
Willingham says that the explosion probably happened because part of the clay floor in Yazoo County “tends to change more than what normal dirt does in the area”, and heavy rains that year did even more unstable things.
If it had happened one or two hours later, this entire community would have been dead.– Hugh (Bubba) Martin
In his investigation into the explosion, the findings of the administration of the security of hazardous materials and materials of the USA. They suggested probable violations of the federal security regulations and proposed a hearing. Instead, Denbury, the pipe operator at that time, agreed to pay a fine of just under $ 3 million of the US.
Exxonmobil, who bought Denbury in 2023, said “strengthened its infrastructure and raised its standards to avoid future incidents” and is working “closely with local lifeguards to guarantee a well -coordinated response to any incident.”
In a statement to CBC, Pathways Alliance said its proposed project would be built “in a stable corridor mainly following the existing road rights, unlike the incident of the CO2 pipe in Mississippi, which was built in an area prone to landslides.”
He also said that he would have “a several layer safety system” that includes real -time pressure monitoring, seismic images and leak detection by computer systems and human operators.
Willingham says that the public must be aware of whether a CO2 pipe is installed in their area regardless of where they live, so the first to respond have better information to save lives and at the same time protect their own.
“Have you ever taught you once in your life what to do if there is a CO2 incident in your area? Why are we not educating our people about what to do?” said.
“I am not anti-pipe, I’m not pro ppeline. I’m just a professional public security.”
Martin says that things could have been catastrophic if the explosions occurred after people were already in bed.
“If it had happened one or two hours later, this whole community would have been dead.”
