Lightning apparently caused a major fire at a gas company in North Carolina early Sunday morning, authorities said.
The blaze started at Colonial Pipeline Company in Greensboro at about 1 a.m. ET, fire officials told CNN affiliate WFMY.
A pipe with 20,000 gallons of gas was burning, the affiliate reported.
The blaze caused the closure of a portion of Interstate 40, the North Carolina Department of Transportation said.
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I've been working next door all night while this is burning and that number is actually Barrels not Gallons, so its really about 840,000 Gallons (42 gallons per barrel) that are on fire with another couple of tanks that have at least another 10,000 gallons each from what we are hearing. I'm being told to expect I-40 to be closed for up to another six hours.
I grew up near the said barrels, located between Kernersville & Greensboro, & as a kid I always wondered what might happen if one of these massive fuel storage units were to catch fire. I always thought that this would be a massive terrorist target. Never thought the terrorist would be lightening though.
Way to give people ideas...
How hard would it have been to add what city the fire is in?
i believe it does tell the name of the city, in the second line of the story page.
This story is wrong. It was a storage tank of gasoline containing 20000 barrels, not gallons. 42 gallons per barrel. This is the largest tank farm on the east coast.
Pete: 840,000 barrels is hardly the largest tank farm on the east coast.
That was 1 tank out of over 200
But there are several of those 840,000 tanks in that farm. They are lined up row after row.
the fire was located along a highway between winston salem and greensboro. closer to the greensboro side. i've always wondered what would happen if one were to catch fire too, guess we know now. hopefully this doesn't raise our gas prices...hey now the question is, was this a bp gas tank? hahaha.
So they said "gas" and meant "gasoline"? It would have been nice if at least the headline had been accurate. "Gas" means natural gas, propane, or the like.
Natural gas is not measured in gallons or barrels as this is a liquid volume.
Idiotic story, bad writing and lousy editing. Colonial is NOT a "gas" company. It is a high-density liquid petroleum pipeline system, and actually a pretty good one. It is not legally treated like a "gas" company, it does not transport vapor methane (at all), its operations are fundamentally different from those of a gas pipeline or local retail gas utility, etc. Go back and rewrite this, and maybe call Colonial (near Atlanta) for a comment before you write something wrong.
http://www.englishtips-self-taught.blogspot.com help to spread this idea overseas...
Agreed. I've seen better writing by interns. Quality is long gone in many things today, especially news reporting.
This story posted by the loser of "Are you smarter than a first grader".