Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Exploding Manholes

Episode Date: October 24, 2018

If you live in a big city in a cold climate, you should keep an eye out for 100-pound cast-iron manhole covers suddenly launching 50 feet into the air. It’s unnervingly common and we’ll tell you why.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and there's Jerry, so let's get going.

You found this stuff, and I think I'd heard of this before because I believe I just kind of happened upon it on our website, but this now scares me for when I go to New York. I wasn't scared until you just said that you were scared, now I'm scared. Because you would usually be scared before I was scared. Yeah, but I guess I hadn't thought it through.

And actually, the spoiler at the end will leave, it's not a ton of people actually get hurt, but I read about exploding manhole covers, and I think that this is gonna land on my head one day, and I will die. And you would, if it landed on your head, yes, you would die, because we're talking about exploding manhole covers,

and they've been known to go, I saw 100 feet in the air, at least 50, says the How Stuff Works article, and these things are enormously heavy, like 85 to 300 pounds, and for those of our friends who live outside the US and Liberia, that's 35 to 135 kilograms. So the mere fact that a manhole cover

has not landed on someone and killed them by now is sheer luck. It sounds that way, yeah. Because it happens a lot, especially depending, like if you're in New York. I mean, it happens in cities all over the country for sure, but if you're in New York, you're in the home of exploding manhole covers

for a couple of reasons we'll talk about, and it happens pretty frequently. So it is, it does seem to be what you just said, sheer luck that no one's died from it yet. And maybe someone has, and we just hadn't found out about it, because apparently the FDNY is not required to report the number of incidents, and the only source of any numbers on this stuff

is Con Edison, and they're the ones who is responsible for this thing. So they may be fudging the numbers. Well, yeah, there's a councilman named Donovan Richards, where there was at the time of this article that has introduced or reintroduced a bill that said, hey, we need more transparency into this, and you guys need to start issuing annual reports

on how many of these things are catching on fire, smoking, exploding. Right, and the fire chief that had fire chief of FDNY leaned into the mic and said, with all due respect, up yours. The fire chief is John Travolta, by the way. And his Dalmatian went, ooh! Right, no, he did that flicking underneath the chin thing

with his paw. Oh man, I wish I could teach my dog to do that. Oh man. That'd be, yeah, they'd have to be able to turn their paw around, that would be odd. YouTube sensation. Yeah. I think the world would forgive the dog

for not turning the paw around. Like just doing it any way would be pretty great. Does Momo know any tricks? She can deal with cards, but that's it. That's it. I finally got Nico shaking now, so consider that a big victory. Oh yeah, that is a big victory.

I taught Mo to give high five, she's pretty good at that. Oh, okay. High five. But then every once in a while, she'd be like, ugh, such a bro thing to do, you know? Yeah, right? Yeah. All right, so I think we should talk about

why this actually, what events lead to this to happen? Yeah, there's actually like a, there's science behind it. Yeah, so let's say we're just gonna keep picking on New York because their underground system and their infrastructure, everyone knows can be quite old and dangerous at times. It's the, again though, it's the home of exploding manholes, right? For a reason.

So New York has the world's largest and oldest electrical system. Underground electrical system. Underground, good catch, man. So they have the largest and oldest, they have just mind-boggling amounts of cables, 98,000 miles of cable and 264,000 manholes, right? Yeah, initially when, because they talk about

vented manholes to help solve this, I was like, just replace them all. And then I saw 264,000, I was like, ew. Right, and I imagine they, each one costs a pretty decent amount. Sure. Because they make them heavy so that, you know, teenagers don't make off with them or something.

Oh, really? I would guess, why else would you make them heavy? I don't know, it's a good question. Maybe make them sturdier? Cars drive over these things. Okay, okay, that's one. They tried balsa wood and it didn't work out. Right, well, because everybody kept stealing

the balsa wood manhole covers. So you have like this, like 98,000 miles of cable or wire underground and hundreds of thousands of manhole covers. So you have a recipe for disaster considering that that 98,000 miles of wiring, 5% of it is almost 100 years old or older. Yeah, and they're supposed to have a lifespan

of about 40 years. So if you've got 100 year old wire down there, you're asking for trouble when it rains or snows or when salt water gets in there from salting streets. And that's basically what happens. Yeah, so this is the science behind it. They actually know what causes exploding manhole covers. At least in New York, right?

Yeah. What you have is this very old wiring and you have, you know, even like a manhole cover that isn't graded or slotted to allow gases to vent. Like it's not water tight. So when it snows, New York, ice is over there or salts their streets. And so the slush, when the snow melts, becomes salt water.

And over time, the salt water goes and trickles down and it corrode the wires, the insulation around the wires. Yeah, and these are wires that these giant New York rats have already been mailing on for years, for centuries. That's another big problem with it too, right? I mean, like 50 pound rats just taking out these wires as much as they like. Cause they love to eat rubber insulation apparently

cause they're stupid. Rats are the worst. So you've got these wires, they're starting to get frayed. You, they're getting frayed in part by the salt water. But the other thing that the salt water is doing is that when these wires are frayed and the actual wiring itself is exposed, salt water is particularly conductive.

Oh yeah. So because of the chlorine and the sodium ions in there, they have an electrical charge themselves and water is conductive by itself too. Like, you know, there's like the whole thing from fear and loathing in Las Vegas where Laszlo wants Hunter Thompson to drop the toaster in the, or the hairdryer in the bath tub with him.

He throws a grapefruit at his head instead. Great, great scene. That's because water is conductive and Laszlo was hip to that kind of thing, right? Yeah. And I remember in high school even like when we did conductivity experiments, it was always saline, it was always salt water.

Right. And so, so water is conductive saline or salt water is super conductive. So when you, it's not actually super conductive, but you know what I mean. Yeah, not in the scientific term. Right. So when you have this frayed wire

that salt water comes in contact with, the wire arcs. That in and of itself is not good because it's gonna short out your electrical system. But the problem is, is when those wires are frayed and the insulation is worn away, it starts, the insulation itself starts to kind of smolder and bubble and flame up itself, which produces gases.

Yeah, so that's the big problem. So what you've got down there is gas is being released, gas is building up, building up pressure. Then you have that electrical arc that's like a bolt of lightning basically. Those two things meet up and say, how you doing? And it ignites and it could lead to, and like we said, sometimes it's smoldering and smoking.

I've seen them literally just on fire, which is almost as disconcerting. Yeah, it's like hell. Yeah, it totally is. But sometimes it will actually, if they meet in the right way, into the right conditions, it will cause that explosion and send a possibly 300 pound manhole cover 100,

well, 50 feet into the air. Right, well let's take a break real quick and we'll come back because we've got more stuff on exploding manholes that you're gonna love. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude,

bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews,

co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger

and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll wanna be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s.

Listen to HeyDude, the 90s, called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road.

Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God.

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each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. OK, dude, so the gas goes boom. And the manhole cover goes flying into the air. And the House of Works article did a really good job of comparing that to an internal combustion engine,

like the pistons in it. Sure. And it's basically the same thing, like the piston presses air down. And a little bit, it takes just a little bit of fuel mixed in with the air to make it combustible because it's compressed. And then when you introduce fire through the spark plug,

then that compressed gas air expands very quickly. It explodes, is what you'd call it. And then the piston goes up. That's the exact same thing that's happening in an exploding manhole when there's gas buildup, right? Yeah. It's just that pressure of the compressed gas

is suddenly released violently, and it explodes outward. And again, it's the same thing that's happening in your car engine, but on a New York City street. Yeah, so I'm reading this stuff. I'm thinking, this is cool and a little scary. But I thought, all right, but this happens probably once every few years, or a few times a year maybe. In 2016, and this is manhole incidents.

Just in New York. So is this exploding manhole incidents, or just like catching fire, or smoking, or whatever? I think any time a manhole cover goes awry, they would call that an incident. OK, in 2016, there were 1,908 of them. And in 2015, there were almost 3,800 manhole incidents, which is a great fan name, actually.

Manhole incidents? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it does all sorts of stuff to the imagination. Or the manhole incident, maybe. Sure. Or Balsa Wood manhole. I saw that in that same year of 2015 in February.

February alone, and I'm sorry, in one week in February, there were 600 manhole incidents in New York. How many, I mean, do the math. That's a lot in a day. And again, this is just what's, Con Edison is telling the media. Like, who knows if there's more? There's nobody running around counting all this.

The only people who have their finger on the pulse of exploding manhole covers is Con Edison. And you know, they're the ones who are responsible for it. Yeah, so despite this, it turns out remarkably that people are usually not injured. It's sort of a rare thing for an actual human injury to happen. And as far as I know, there's never been someone killed by a manhole cover exploding.

That is not true. Oh, really? I looked it up, man. But it's not in New York. There has to be somebody who died in New York. Apparently, Boston has another problem with it itself. Like, I guess Chicago does, like any major city with an old electrical infrastructure, manhole covers,

and salty snowmelt. Is it going to have exploding manhole covers? DC has a problem with it, but there's comes from natural gas, supposedly. And they only have an average of like 38 a year, I think. But Boston has a problem with it, too. And in 2016, there was a freak accident where a high school art teacher was driving in Boston

and a manhole cover exploded and rose up just enough to come through her windshield as she was driving and killed her instantly. Wow. That is awful. Yeah, man. If that happens to you, your number is up. Yeah, that's like when the tree fell on the guy's truck

across from my house at times, sitting in a stoplight. Yeah. Or that actress who was in Chicago riding her bike through the park and a tree fell over on her. I think we talked about that. Like, if a tree falls on you while you're moving. Yeah. Like, that's, yeah, you're not escaping that.

No, you're not. Man, that is really sad. It is. What a terrible way to end. Yeah, I know. Well, here's it gets even worse. She was a beloved art teacher. As they all are.

Yeah. Well, I don't know. There's the jerk art teachers, too, who are really just mad they're teaching, you know? Well, let's see. Thanks a lot for joining us. If you want to hang out with us, we're all over social media. Just look us up.

And you can hang out with us at our home on the web stuff you should know. And we'll see you next time. Watch out for those manholes, everybody. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the

cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band or each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.