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North End manhole explodes, belches smoke, shoots heavy cover into the air
By adamg on Wed, 08/23/2023 - 9:47pm
Smoking manhole and its newly upside-down cover. Photo by Shamus Moynihan.
Shamus Moynihan reports that a manhole exploded at Atlantic Avenue and Commercial Wharf around 7:30 p.m., sending smoke 30 feet into the air and ejecting its heavy cover hard enough it flew up then came down and landed top down back on the hole. "Luckily, no one was hurt," he says.
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Comments
Saw one steaming pretty bad
Saw one steaming pretty bad right outside the Dept.Mental Health and Ed Brooke Court House last week but crews were pulling up to it already. The old saying about one being cheap, "He throws quarters around like manhole covers" isn't so true when the quarters decide to start flying out of the pockets by themselves when the quarters start to "burn a whole is his pocket" like these smoking and steaming launchers.
Smoke or steam?
There are steam pipes in the area, and sometimes they heat up groundwater enough to turn it into steam *outside* the pipe, and that steam then comes up through utility covers. (This can make the ground dangerously hot.)
But steam isn't going to make an explosion like this. The usual cause is a neglected gas leak that finally ignites, and what you see afterwards is smoke.
No ours
I happen to work for one of the most widespread district steam companies in the city and that pipe wasn't one of ours. Either it was a small operation or it wasn't steam. And steam can totally make explosions like that, typically due to steam hammering.
Yet another superb
Yet another superb performance by one of Boston's top tourist attractions.
That's a busy area
Very lucky that it didn't hit any people or buildings.
I have so many questions
I have so many questions about this.
Now, remember,
stand a good distance away from Old Faithful, and never feed the bears.