We use pressurized gas, and chemicals that vaporize into gas, for so many things: Natural gas for home heating and cooking, acetylene for welding, oxygen for medical use, ammonia as fertilizer; it just goes on and on. All of them, even the inert ones such as argon, pose a bunch of hazards. Preppers need to be ready to deal with gas leaks.
Salty and I talk about it in this podcast:
Gas Density Matters.
Once upon a time in our rural county, the school board had all the small old schools inspected by an architect. After the second inspection the architect marched in and announced he would not allow what had seemed to be the best of the schools to re-open.
Some brain child had replaced the old coal-fired boiler in the basement of the school with a propane boiler. An unvented, low room with a stock of propane and old wiring. It would very literally be safer to park your elementary school on top of a Minuteman silo over a nuclear weapon.
A gas more dense than air sinks into low places when it leak. It collect there. Sinks fill with ether from using the solvent on a lab bench and explode when a match is dropped in the sink. Basements are turned into bombs by leaking propane, or oxygen. Chlorine gas fills the trenches, poisoning the soldiers sheltering from the bombardment. People walk into a basement and simply suffocate for lack of oxygen, as argon or carbon dioxide has displaced the air.
Most other kinds of gas we use, fortunately, have densities less than air. It is easier for these gases to dissipate and harder for them to collect to dangerous concentrations. That doesn’t mean they’re perfectly safe, though…
Gas danger, in quantity: Anhydrous Ammonia
I probably drove by fifty different giant tanks capable of leaking highly toxic ammonia gas today. A train with at least twenty tanks of it went below me at an overpass. It wasn’t an unusual day; you were probably downwind of several yourself.
These two things are often found together: Trains and tanks of ammonia.
Anhydrous ammonia is a liquid sprayed on farm fields as fertilizer. It’s also in common use in industrial production. Worse, druggies use it to make methamphetamine. They often steal it from the tanks farmers keep for fertilizer. At least the farmers and transporters must be trained in the use of this nasty stuff; but the meth-makers are often high school dropouts who are trying to work stoned. I’m sure they’re Reeeaaalll careful though!
Nothing says Spring in rural Missouri like being behind one of these on a highway. If one’s tipped, Maybe not go downwind of it.
If a tank of anhydrous leaks, the best you can do is get out of the downwind path. Do you know where the railroad tracks are near your home, and the fastest route to get away from them given various wind directions? Time to find out.
Click here for a complete post we did on this threat.
How to make a rocket
Have you ever noticed that gas cylinders, even the ones with just air like scuba divers use, are often chained to a wall? It’s not about theft. If you get a leak in a tank, you have a high-pressure jet of air coming out of a small hole. That’s the definition of a jet. As in, the type of engines that propel rockets.
Cylinder with a jet at one end. You don’t want to be near a gas cylinder doing its version of this!
When a gas cylinder gets a big enough leak to make a powerful jet, it becomes a large, uncontrolled metal projectile that Will move randomly and at high speed until it runs out of gas. Being near one has all the charm of shooting a handgun in a ricochet chamber. If a leak develops, a very quick and accurate decision must be made about whether you can stop the leak Right Away, or should just run like a bunny.
But it’s just a Tiny gas leak … right?
Sometimes a YouTube is worth a thousand words. Check out this video to see what happened when some tiny channels developed in the Teton dam in Idaho:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6NAjrIjf3U
In words (less than a thousand, I promise), small leaks tend to erode around the edges of the flaw, leading quickly to catastrophic failure. As a scuba diver, I’ve seen one small bubble every ten seconds from a flawed o-ring turn into a hissing, spluttering explosion before we could get two sentences into the discussion over what to do about the small leak. Well, at least That became an easy decision.
Expect a small leak to grow like a wildfire on a windy day if not immediately controlled. It might not happen … but you won’t know until afterward.
So have a gas mask on hand at all times?
Well, some preppers do. We don’t; judging the need a low probability. If you judge protective gear worth the investment, I’d suggest getting one of the portable units fire fighters use. Scuba Diver Tip: Scuba gear, complete with mask, is effective against gas hazards, since you have a self-contained breathing gas system plus pretty good eye prescriptions.
Scuba gear is a portable breathing apparatus with eye protection. It would do against many gas dangers, in a pinch.
For many gas leak emergencies, the best answer is to beat feet out of the area of effect until the gas dissipates. Salty and I do keep cars stocked so we can quickly evacuate if an ammonia tanker has an accident near us; that’s our biggest gas risk. Oh, and we don’t put our propane heater in the basement, and do pair it with carbon monoxide monitors and auto-off safety features. Gas may not be weighty, but it’s wise to respect its hazards.
great post, so many people have this idea that even the cheap surplus gas masks will provide them safety from everything by all the facebook or blog posts they’ve read. When in reality many of those chemicals found on rail cars and trailers containing heavier than air products will suffocate them just as fast without a proper mask. My Dad was a railroad engineer and told us at a young age biggest thing to learn, know the direction of the wind and go upwind of leakage from railcar – if can’t then go perpendicular to it as fast as possible. Thank you for this reminder.
Interesting. As a fellow, but less experienced, diver I can now justify my wife’s and my diving gear as a prep! Thank you!
Ah, it gets better! Have you been Itching to find an excuse for a full face mask rig with radios? 😉