About 3:36 p.m. e.s.t. on March 6, 1980, a pressure surge on Colonial Pipeline Company's 32-inch-diameter pipeline ruptured the pipeline in two locations; one near Manassas, the other in Orange County, near Fredericksburg, Virginia. No personal deaths or injuries resulted but thousands of fish and some waterfowl were killed and freshwater sources at the Occoquan Reservoir and the Rappahannock River were threatened with pollution. The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the pipeline rupture was a pressure surge initiated by the automatic shutdown of a pump station caused by the dispatcher's delay in getting it started, followed by his attempt to relieve the surge pressure into a stub-line connection instead of following the company procedure of shutting down all of the pumps on the line. The pipeline failed at two pre-existing defects: one where the pipe had been thinned by corrosion; the other where a crack propagated to failure.


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    Title :

    Pipeline Accident Report: Colonial Pipeline Company, Petroleum Products Pipeline Failures, Manassas and Locust Grove, Virginia, March 6, 1980


    Publication date :

    1981


    Size :

    38 pages


    Type of media :

    Report


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English