Fort Worth Explosions? Just WTF is going here?

It is a loosely coupled line arcing to ground along several points.

Either a hot phase that was knocked to the ground and is being back feed from 3 phase transformers along the line. Or a ground wire that was melted in two by lighting and the neutral currents are arcing along wooden poles and pole hardware to the ground.

I would say it’s most likely the latter. The blue lights are metal to metal arcs. The reddish ones are caused by wood being vaporized in the arc.

If it was a multiple phase to ground arc, it would be more violent and trip something. This looks more like it being a limited current arc. That would be caused by a ground wire being broken and the return current is trying to find a way back. Its arcing across the small spool insulators that most power companies use to mount the neutral to the pole. The arc current is being limited by the current the load is pulling. It is arcing randomly at each pole along the line.

Around here, where lighting is common, the power company bonds the neutral to the ground wire running down every pole just because of that situation. If the neutral is taken out, then the ground return currents can travel back via the natural ground path without the chance of dangerous voltages building up. And, when lighting hits the ground wire, then the bonding to the ground wire on each pole makes a convenient path for the lighting to take to ground, without hitting the utility equipment at each end. The ground wire on each pole goes down to the bottom, and is coiled around the bottom part that is under the ground level. So each pole serves as a ground rod driven in the ground.

From the light display on that video, I can take it that that power company doesn’t have such installation practices.

And a lighting strike doesn’t have to hit right where it burned in two. It could hit anywhere along the line and the weakest link somewhere else along the line could go first. Like a substandard splice or where a crew used a short section of wire that was a lighter gauge than the rest of the line.

And I would say that it was a transmission line from a power plant to a substation, not a distribution from a substation to multiple end users. If it was a distribution line with that much voltage on the neutral, it would cause a lot of damage to a lot of houses.

On second thought…… if there was a long distribution line that went a long distance before it reached the customer base and fanned out, and the neutral was broke just before it reached the area where it fanned out. Then the substation could be floating above ground. And the arcing would be the neutral currents from the substation trying to find their way back to the rest of the (better grounded) distribution system.

Originally posted by Swills

I thought I saw orbs or something in the background skies, but I figured it also could be light and it's trickery with camera lenses

Fire and police dispatchers were busy Tuesday night answering calls about "fireballs" in the sky and on the ground in east Fort Worth

looks directly over it to me, especially the two at .18-.21, first one at .13 seems a little back and to the right, plus the clouds appear to light up a little towards the upper left @ the .20-.24 mark, ball lightning?

Originally posted by CastleMadeOfSand
reply to post by jaydeePNW

 

Just curious.....but did you read the link the OP provided? Power outages occurred throughout east Ft. Worth shortly afterwards.

Yeah, I could be wrong. Put the video in full screen and it could be transformers from pole to pole. I have seen transformers blow up in a lightning storm in Florida and it does give that bright light, but I never seen so many blow up all the sudden. There is a laser light show in this area that looks a hell of a lot like that from a distance though...

I looked through google and can't confirm a light show there at that date.

reply to post by Mr Tranny


Thank you for that well written post

That pretty much hits the nail on the head.

Here is a picture of an old spool insulator.

commons.wikimedia.org...:Spool_insulator_7909.jpg

Second picture in the next link is a spool insulator on a standoff bracket. For mouthing a neutral wire.

www.hubbellpowersystems.com...

The last picture in this link shows a spool insulator in a typical neutral wire installation.

www.ceramic-insulator.com...

They are good for household voltages up to around 600V. They are commonly used to insulate secondary wires from the transformer to the individual houses. But if you push the voltage into the KV range, then the you know what will hit the fan.

They are used on neutrals to prevent current flow through the mounting hardware which can cause galvanic damage to the bolt going through the wood pole. Stray currents can cause hardware to rust and decay quicker and reduce the usable lifespan of the installation..

If the neutral is broke and the voltage tries to come up to line voltage, then it can, and will arc at many of the neutral insulators along the line.

edit......

Here is the same type of fault (broken ground) in an underground transformer installation. It basically turns the installation into an arc welder on steroids that chews away at anything it can get at.



and a second vid......

Have to agree with Tranny... As he said, this is most likely a main feeder or distribution line coming from a power plant heading to a substation. If these were lines heading to an end user as Tranny indicated, the step-down transformers we are all familiar with would have blown their shotgun shell breakaways rendering the transformer useless until power crews repair the issue, hence the loud bangs one hears when they blow.

I think its a great possibility Mr. Tranny hit the nail on the head, but...something i question is the objects filmed above the explosions. Were they just incoming planes, helis, ball lightning or something more? It does seem as if the explosions illuminate the objects. It looks like they were very close if not right above in my opinion. Maybe this is a prime example of UFOs interfering with our electrical equipment?

reply to post by Swills


I live in the northeast TX area- and just so happened to be in the Ft. Worth area last night and saw them myself- awesome light show!!! =D
It was a bunch of transformers exploding because of a lightning strike that set off a chain reaction.
We've had WICKED lightning for the past 2 days- today was even more intense.
Exploding Fort Worth Transformers Caught on Tape

You know, I've see this a couple of times, and my question is simply "If transformers are blowing, why aren't lights going out?"
Maybe I'm dense, but when I've seen this before, the grid gets affected.

The reason the lights aren't going out is most likely due to 'redundancy'.

The 'grid' is like a spider web. Knocking out one link will not affect the overall web itself too badly.

Of course, if you knock out a critically important link, then the whole web can come down.

So I would have to say the affected area (where the explosions occurred) is not critically important, although we could assume it is still important and they will probably work on fixing the damage asap.

For an area as large as Ft Worth - Dallas metro, you could expect to see many of these relay stations. Losing one sucks but as we can see it's not going to take down the city. Perhaps if it happened at a more centralized and critical section of the grid the whole place would have gone out?

Apparently the whole thing went on for 30 minutes. I find it unlikely that so many blown transformers wouldn't cause a blackout in the nearby area. I also find it odd that there is no noise of explosions. And is it odd that this thread just disappeared from the top topics list?

Originally posted by Divine Strake
You know, I've see this a couple of times, and my question is simply "If transformers are blowing, why aren't lights going out?"
Maybe I'm dense, but when I've seen this before, the grid gets affected.

Bloomin Good Point Mate! Those white Orbs in the sky too ----- somethings up!

If those Orbs are Ball Lightening - How come they're not flashing or Lighting up in anyway?

Originally posted by truthseekerlady77

Originally posted by AngelsOnMyShoulder
www.star-telegram.com...

According to this article it was lightening hitting transformers..

Ok now, this story just made me suspicious. No way in heck that was caused by lightning strikes. Now it has me wondering what is being hidden. LOL

Thats funny because that's exactly what it looks like to me .. we had something very much like that happen near by me during the ice storm a couple months ago, it wasn't lightning that started it off but it was ice and water causing a transformer to pop and then after a couple went it caused a chain reaction of transformers going and then the sub station lit up and all the huge transformers did the same thing.. it was quite a show

and of course please notice that in that area where the lights are, there's smoke .. and also notice the big patch of area that is no longer lit up ( power appears to be out in a huge swath of land )

Originally posted by Divine Strake
You know, I've see this a couple of times, and my question is simply "If transformers are blowing, why aren't lights going out?"
Maybe I'm dense, but when I've seen this before, the grid gets affected.

I witnessed this during an ice storm.. it was only maybe 2-3 miles from me and my power didn't go off, but power did go off for several blocks in the area right where it happened.. the grid is very good at handling this kind of thing, it's redundantly fed

reply to post by AngelsOnMyShoulder


Silent lightning??

I also noticed some lightning or electo-static bolts but they appeared to originate from the ground...

Veery strange indeed... i flagged this after watching that clip for 15 seconds! Thanks for the upload

Although it did seem convienient that a HD cam was focused on the area straight away and appeared to be set up on a tri-pod... very convienient.

I am not saying it was hoaxed but it appeared that whoever actually filmed knew to expect it.





Did anyone else notice the solid lights that appeared in the sky above the flashes? They looked like stars but where lit up in between flashes and seemed to be close to the ground??

Notice the light points or 'dots' in the sky?

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/49daa837c14e.jpg[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/7ea00e27f611.jpg[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/7d75458e499e.jpg[/atsimg]


It seems they change position and only become visible during the bright flashes.

Good grief!!

I noticed the orbs, too, and wondered about those.

As for a time-stamp, the dawn chorus is the only sound on the clip - that means it's approximately an hour before dawn. I get up really early, and love the dawn chorus....and why was there no sound of explosions? Those looked to be pretty big "shorts" or whatever, wouldn't the sound have carried eventually?

Wow, that was really something!

reply to post by Mr Tranny


sorry but I'm not seeing it -neither of the videos is close to what's being witnessed in FTW, they don't even light up the buildings right next to them (second one a little bit), much less the entire area and at a length plus there are no sounds-every transformer/electrical explosion I've seen/heard was extremely loud and lit up entire area like lightning

reply to post by Havick007


These "orbs" are just lens flares. Notice in the last picture how there are two bright lights that correspond to the two "orbs". If you watch the video closely you will only see them appear when there are flashes on the ground. These flashes are very very bright, hence the lens flares.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/49daa837c14e.jpg[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/7ea00e27f611.jpg[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/7d75458e499e.jpg[/atsimg]

That is the most bizarre video I've seen. At first viewing it seemed as if a pulse had hit a main station and it caused a chain reaction. Usually when transformers blow they don't do it but that one time. In the video it appeared as if the same transformers continued exploding over and over and that in and of itself is weird.