The Lake Peigneur Disaster: The Sinkhole that Swallowed a Lake



Discover the incredible story of Lake Peigneur, a drilling site turned disaster zone. In 1980, Texaco’s accidental drill hit an underground salt mine, creating a vortex that swallowed the entire lake!

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50 thoughts on “The Lake Peigneur Disaster: The Sinkhole that Swallowed a Lake”

  1. Included with the horrible graphics is a History Channel aerial image. My father flew that plane and I grew up a few miles away. Live Oak Gardens is/was a botanical garden that was deeply impacted. The whole thing was very sad.

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  2. So besides the few dogs and maybe the people that may or may not have died (unclear), it was mostly a disaster for capitalism since the companies lost their drill spot, equipment, and no money was to be made.

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  3. It's crazy how fast a lake can drain — when I was a kid in the 70's, a sinkhole opened up under Lake Garfield, a bit south of Winter Haven and Wahneta in Florida, and sucked all the water down into the aquifer. Sinkholes weren't uncommon in the area, and the lake wasn't super deep — but from Friday night to Saturday morning it went from a nice boating lake to a huge gray mud puddle. Everyone in the area swarmed there to scoop up all the fish (not to save them, of course, except for dinner :P). The county eventually filled the sinkhole and restored the lake, and now the whole area around the lake and all the cow pastures nearby have been developed into hundreds of very expensive homes…. that are all built on land that used to get sinkholes on a super regular basis.

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  4. OH MY FUCKING GOD, wtf is going on WITH SOUND IN YOUR RECENT VIDS?!?!?!?!?

    It is ALL MUSH.
    Granted, I have hearing issues, but ALL OTHER CHANNELS ARE INTELLIGIBLE.
    Your channels are NOT.

    Holy Fuck, FIX YOUR SOUND.

    good lord. Does no one on your team LISTEN to what you PUBLISH????

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  5. Ok so your info is a tad off..
    Texaco was doung exploratory drilling above a salt mine. They belived the depth was nowhere near the mines shafts so they punched though it took roughly 20mins to realize what had happend and by that time it was too late the barge becan to tilt and eventually got sucked down into the salt mine. The last barge to rise was in 1992 and nothing has risen since leaving a drilling rog and barge and around 30 trees still stuck inside

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  6. Diamond Crystal's horizontal shaft had gotten too close to the edge of the salt dome. They didn't report it to the state and gave the wrong coordinates of the mine to Texaco.
    There reason that the mining crews were able to evacuate safely is the two young miners had gone to the end of shaft were old worn out mining equipment was just left, and where there had been a trickle of water for some years. They had gone there during a break to smoke some weed. While there they saw the trickle had gained in quantity so warned the other miners.

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  7. Just a small bit of feedback – these videos are usually super highly produced and great. But in this video I struggled to hear a lot of the speech as the music was too loud over various parts.

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  8. Simon, others may have mentioned this already, but I noticed that at about the 9:05 mark you mentioned that the miners that lost their lives had received no compensation. Earlier you said that no miners had lost their lives. I am taking it that you were going to say that they had received no compensation for losing their jobs. Not trying to be rude, just pointing it out. I enjoy your videos immensely and look forward to seeing many more.

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