Drainspotting.com is a terrific collection of manhole covers – and a few other pieces of imagery embedded in sidewalks. The following images from DrainSpotting were taken by Edward MacGregor Since one of the most important things we can do in preparing our own communities is to know what’s underneath them, knowledge of what covers the openings seems a good starting point. At this writing, I’m several thousand feet away from an underground, unmarked

series of pipes which carry, among other things, jet fuel. (One backhoe miscalculation and one cigarette away from what we suspect would be a memorable incident).

Got a question about this the other day; here’s what I know – we’ll add some more information later:

1. An exploding manhole cover is  a predictor of nearby manhole cover explosions. But not necessarily adjacent holes. So if there’s a problem with one – great caution about all area manholes is indicated. 

2. They’re very heavy – and they’ve been measured going as high as 400 feet vertical. After that, they descend (32fps squared, less  drag). Do the math.

Here’s one resource

“How Exploding Manholes Work ,”  by Kevin Bonsor, on HowStuffWorks.com

 From Pruned:

From one of the pages of Modern Mechanics and Invention, scanned and transcribed here by Modern Mechanix, we learn that “[o]ne of the oddest hobbies in the world is that of Dr. H. G. Dyar, international authority on moths and butterflies of the Smithsonian Institution, who has found health and recreation in digging an amazing series of tunnels beneath his Washington home.”

And he was quite the mole: digging and removing the dirt without the help of heavy machinery, “[a]lmost a quarter of a mile of tunnels has been completed, lined with concrete. The deepest passage, illustrated in the accompanying diagram, extends 32 feet down.”

In case you’re wondering: yes, Dr. H. G. Dyar is Geoff Manaugh‘s nom de plume. So watch out California, his tunneling activities will undoubtedly compromise the tectonic integrity of the San Andreas Fault.

It’s our thought that we’re going to need to encourage the hobbyists – if not, we may have to improvise uses of existing tunnels.

Here’s a 2005 piece from Building Blog called “London Topological.” Not to quibble – bu t perhaps more correctly London Infralogical – or Infra-Topo-

logical? We recommend it for the following reasons:

1. Every piece on  Building Blog perhaps more properly, BLDG BLOG – is worth reading, whether or not you think that you care about architecture.
2. Read a couple of pieces, and you’ll realize that of course

   you care about architecture.

3. This particular piece has implications for anyone who thinks about (relatively) modern history
4. and even more so for people who care about emergency planning. Although the author, Geoff Manaugh, doesn’t address those issues directly.

We’ll try to directly address the implications of underground system for emergency planners in upcoming posts.

Subbterranea Britannica

documenta underground structures – from WW II and the Cold War.  Here are images from various shelters in London:

Nick Catford wrote, in August of 2004,

After nearly eight years and thousands of miles the survey of 1563 ROC underground monitoring posts finally came to an end on Monday 16th August when the last post site was visited at Port Ellen on the Island of Islay off the Scottish west coast.

The folowing set are of disused Royal Observer Corps posts – they’re all  artifacts of the Cold War, acording to Subterranea Britannica – none has a construction date early than 1957; they were all closed in September of 1991:

Note that none appears hidden – at least not based on these relatively recent images. Nor does any have a gun port – or multiple gun ports, which could create a field of fire.

Subterranea Britannica: the  study and investigation of all man-made and man used underground places.

I’d like to see the tunnel that Sherlock Holmes discovered in the “The Red-Headed League.”

The delays on New York’s Second Avenue line are nearing pension age. Our ability to use additional underground capacity – to move passengers, to move freight, and as emergency shelter – is not matched by planning or construction.

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Yet – our former colonial masters – at whom Americans snicker – (yes, marmite doesn’t quite make sense; but this is beside the point) – continue to surpass us in mass transportation and energy efficiency. They’re building new underground train extensions The “long train(s) of abuses and usurpations,” will, reportedly, carry 1,500 passengers  each. The “patient sufferance of these Colonies” perhaps now means that ‘we’ll build mass transportation systems when we’re good and ready.’ [singlepic=72,320,240,,right]

Thingsmagazine

reports that the Brits have taken a decision to start construction on a long-planned extension to the London underground transit system – Crossrail. And plans for the “Thames2000” extension remain under discussion. They could dither for another few years  – and they’d still get it done before the Second Avenue Subway. The following images are of the Thames2000 system.

Images from the thingsmagazine piece, linked here .

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None

Inhabitat

posts today its Transportation Tuesday: top 10 cities for public transit:

Just because we’re in the top 5 –  doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be doing more.

Last Sunday’s Times, Metro section,  Sunday September 16, 2007, page 21, column 1, headlined: “Pipeline Accident Kills Worker.”  No dateline, no byline. Not showing up in the Times’ archive search on its website. From that piece, which reports that Mr. McCaffrey was killed on Saturday:

The worker, identified as Pat McCaffrey, 67, of Lebanon, N.J. , was operating a crane-like machine called a side boom.

“This is a terrible tragedy,” said Michael Armiak, a spokesman for Millenium Pipeline Company, which is overseeing the building of the pipeline. He said Mr. McCaffrey worked for a contractor, Precision Pipeline, based in Wisconsin.

The pipeline, scheduled to be completed by November 2008, is to stretch across the Southern Tier and Lower Hudson Valley.

Kris Alexander at Danger Room has a short report and incisive analysis of these attacks, which PEMEX (Mexico’s oil exporting entity) claims will require hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs. PEMEX also claims – in my view, not plausibly – that it won’t cause disruptions in exports (and to United States imports).

Photo by Pablo Spencer of the Associated Press.

Flames were visible at least six miles away. Thousands of people were evacuated; two women died of heart attacks.

Mexican authorities told the Associated Press that a note from a leftist group was found next to at least one unexploded device.

From Kris Alexander’s piece in Wired.com’s Danger Room

:

Mexico supplies much of US oil and gas imports. Are higher gas prices on the way? Pemex, Mexico’s state-run oil company, claims that the attacks haven’t disrupted export supplies, but will cost hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. With the U.S. economy already on shaky ground because of the sub-prime loan crisis, another such attack that did actually disrupt export oil supplies could have a direct economic impact on the U.S.

Counter-terrorism expert John Robb sees both attacks as a particularily good systempunkt — a point where a series of attacks on key nodes will cause the collapse of the entire system, essentially effects-based operations on the cheap. A few hundred dollars spent on explosives causes millions in damage.

It’s not clear from the underlying Associated Press report, published on MSNBC, whether or not the pipelines are underground or aboveground. Our concern about that detail is that we’re still working up the learning curve in trying to understand the risk of petroleum pipelines. (The “editorial offices” of Popular Logistics are in a roughly .75 square mile area which contain four underground petroleum lines, about which we presently know far too little).

DisasterNewsNet reports that a volunteer organization, Operation Blessing International, has conducted a successful rodent reduction program in 1,158 blocks in New Orleans. The principal tool is a cube shaped toxic rat bait with a flavor/smell agent which, it’s reported, are unattractive to other animals.

From Nancy Hogland’s August 30th piece:

“When residents were forced out of their homes by Hurricane Katrina, most of them grabbed their valuables and pictures. However, what they left behind quickly became what I call a ‘super-sized buffet’ for rats,” said Jody Harrington, director of U.S. disaster relief for OBI.

“The cabinets were stocked with crackers and such and the refrigerators were full of gross, rotten food – everything rats love to munch on. All those abandoned homes became the perfect atmosphere for them to live, eat and reproduce.”

She said because OBI volunteers had already been working with the New Orleans Mosquito and Termite Control Board on a mosquito eradication project, city officials turned to them first for help.

“The city hadn’t been taken over by rats, as some have said, but there were areas where there were very large populations,” Harrington said. “In fact, when we were baiting sewers on Desire Street, a woman standing on the second story of her home saw us and asked what we were doing.

We suppose that in doing shelter-in-place planning, this is a strong argument for making sure that sanitation is planned for any situation which lasts for longer than one day.

I’ll add that our building – 36 units – started composting several years ago. Use has increased so much that we needed to add a second barrel. So the inference I draw is – that in a properly staffed system – either shelter-in-place or in large-scale shelters, if garbage pickup is not happening – it might well be possible to turn most of the rat food into compost.

Just beginning to learn about this – so here are a few interesting links

RockPlan – Finnish construction firm which, because they require it , builds shelters underneath buildings. Some images of some of their work

; they’d make James Bond’s film nemeses jealous.

And here ‘s the  Finnish government’s civil defense website.  Calm,  organized. Very clean lots-of-white-space design.  It’s not likely to be mistaken for  a U.S. government website.

For outstanding coverage of mine safety and the current crises, The Pump Handle is the place to go. Excellent posts by Liz Borkowski and Celeste Monforton and Christina Morgan.

Permit us to suggest a frame of reference. One doesn’t need to be an expert to know that

(1) there are great incentives for mine owners to ignore safety,

(2) this may constitute what economists refer to as “a race to the bottom,”

(3) negligible penalties for ignoring the rules as they exist;

(4) lax enforcement (likelihood of detection)

(5) minimally deterrent punishment structure (if caught, no real possibility of jail time, fines, or civil penalties which outweigh profits

We’re confident that we can  prove these assertions without breaking a sweat. Don’t the same dynamics hold true in other American contexts?

So – canaries are to coal miners as coal miners are to the general population. 

If we don’t care enough as a country about coal miners to make sure they’re safe – people in an exceptionally high-risk occupation – what does it say about the prospects for safety in the nation as a whole?

Why isn’t this an issue – for both parties – in the presidential campaign?

This is why the Times policy of limiting certain articles to Times Select subscribers is disturbing. I’m going to write now about an actual life-and- death issue for New Yorkers, but can’t link to it because of their restrictions. We regard the following excerpt as within the scope of the “fair use” doctrine of the copyright laws.

And here’s a link to Behind the Times (Subscripton Wall), and a link to the Dwyer piece. Here’s a piece:

At the corner of Hudson and Morton Streets, he called her from a pay phone.

“Hello,” she said.

Something jolted Mr. Vanaria’s elbow. Then it shot into his arm. Waves of pain ran along his arm. He nested the phone on his left shoulder, cranked his ear down.

“I said, ‘I think I’m having a heart attack,’ ” he recalled this week.

He was just about to turn 47, the hour of life when the body becomes a permanent suspect in acts of treachery. To calm himself, Mr. Vanaria reached for one of the posts next to the phone, and gripped it. He screamed. Someone was shooting him dead, a machine gun, it was the tail end of an era of drive-by killings, he was being riddled with bullets. He looked into the street to see his murderers.

No car. No gunmen. No one.

Then he realized that he could not let go of the post. Panic and pain ripped through his body. His arm fought with his fingers, which were locked onto the post by an invisible force. He unclenched his grip and pulled away.

A man stood nearby. “What’s happening?” he asked Mr. Vanaria.

“You don’t understand,” Mr. Vanaria said. “I was being electrocuted.”

– snip –

He had, he learned, suffered a brain injury. He had literally been fried.

“Those first five years were really, really dark,” Mr. Vanaria said. “I wouldn’t call it attention deficit. It was a collision of thoughts, like a car crash.”

He had to give up his job teaching third graders at a parochial school. He stopped dancing in clubs. He used to draw, but felt that his sense of shape and color had seeped away.

He sued Con Edison, which, it turned out, had installed a high-voltage vault beneath the pay phone at Hudson and Morton Streets. The utility had put a pump in the vault to clear water out; the pump burned out, but because it was not equipped with a circuit breaker or a fuse, electricity passed to the pump, then to a drain pipe, a metal grate, up to the telephone and into Philip Vanaria’s body and brain.

There was no question that Con Edison had been negligent, a judge found; only the amount of damages was at issue. The jury awarded Mr. Vanaria $1.9 million. The circuit breaker would have been a few dollars.

Here are some questions whose answers might be helpful:

1. Who tracks these injuries and deaths?
2. How do we detect this problem on our own?
3. What’s our risk here? Is this a acceptable level?

This subject will bear some further inquiries. Please check back. [Cross-posted at www.catonavenue.com and www.catonstratford.com