The Lake Peigneur Disaster


On Thursday, November 21, 1980 near New Iberia, Louisiana, the sun was rising on Lake Peigneur. Located on this 1,300 acre lake, which was just three feet in depth, was Jefferson Island, home to the beautiful Live Oak Gardens Botanical Park, along with many gas and oil wells. The Wilson Brothers Corporation, hired by Texaco, was drilling a test hole, when something started to go haywire at 1,228 feet.
The five-man night crew had run into some drilling problems and by 6:30 AM, the drilling rig started to tilt slightly. The crew suspected that the drilling rig was collapsing under their feet. so they abandoned the platform and headed for shore just 200 to 300 yards away.
The water of Lake Peigneur slowly started to turn, eventually forming a giant whirlpool. A large crater developed in the bottom of the lake amd grew larger and larger (it would eventually reach sixty yards in diameter). The water went down the hole faster and faster. The lake had been connected by the Delcambre Canal to the Gulf of Mexico, some twelve miles away. The ever-emptying lake caused the canal to lower by 3.5 feet and to start flowing in reverse. A fifty foot waterfall (the highest ever to exist in the state) formed where the canal water emptied into the crater.
The whirlpool easily sucked up the $5 million Texaco drilling platform, a second drilling rig that was nearby, a tugboat, eleven barges from the canal, a barge loading dock, seventy acres of Jefferson Island and its botanical gardens, parts of greenhouses, a house trailer, trucks, tractors, a parking lot, tons of mud, trees, and other items along with the l.5 billion gallons of water that magically drained down the hole.
What had caused all this? Texaco had been drilling on the edge of a salt dome and they drilled right into the third level of the Diamond Crystal Salt Mine operating nearby. They knew the mine was there and had contacted the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, which had in turn contacted Diamond Crystal. Unfortunately, the necessary communications failed to take place and the disaster occurred.
When the water came in contact with the salt, the salt pillars that had been left in place to support the roof above (most of the tunnels had 80 foot high ceilings) were dissolved and all the land on the surface started to cave in. The small hole that Texaco had drilled became bigger and bigger and the resulting whirlpool sucked everything into the hole.
Fifty workers were in the mine when the disaster occurred. Nine of the miners were working in the 1,300 foot third level. They immediately hopped into the mine's steel cage and were hoisted to safety. The remaining forty-one workers were working at 1,500 feet below the surface on the fourth level. They quickly ran up to the third level, only to find that the corridor to the elevators was blocked by waist-deep water. The workers were able to use some of the carts and diesel powered vehicles in the mine to drive to the 1,000 foot level, where they caught an elevator to the surface.
The mine and its equipment were a total loss, but astonishingly, there was no loss of human life. However several lawsuits were instigated and eventually Texaco and Wilson Brothers agreed to pay $32 million to Diamond Crystal and $12.8 million to the Live Oak Gardens in out-of-court settlements.
Most of the mine workers were able to find other employment, and the torrent of water had helped dredge Delcambre Canal so that it was two-to-four feet deeper. And of course, the three-foot-deep Lake Peigneur was now 1,300 feet deep!

Thanks Dave,

That was really interesting to read, I have never heard anything about it, quite amazing that their was no loss of human life!

All that stuff must be sitting at the bottom of the lake .... wow!

I remember that story! It just teaches us that man cannot control mother nature!!!! And someday Mother Nature will teach us a valuable lesson if we do not take better care of our planet!!!!!!!!!!!

I remember when that happened and it is really impossible to drive by it today and not image what it use to look like. Thanks for the story

The day this happened I was on the drilling rig Rowan Texas offshore Sabine Pass, Texas contracted to Exxon Company USA. We thought this had happened to an Exxon rig drilling in the area. We finally got the full story six houirs after the event was televised and the Exxon company reps on board were very happy that this was not their rig. Little did they know that in a few years Exxon would make headlines all over the world for a maritime accident. These accidents happen every so often where even land rigs get sucked into the earth, but are seldom in the news. co: