The Swallowing of Lake Peigneur (New Iberia, Louisiana – November 20, 1980) — Imagine History
Generates cinematic images and short stories that imagine major historical events through the eyes of witnesses.
The Swallowing of Lake Peigneur (New Iberia, Louisiana – November 20, 1980)
The morning had started like any other quiet Thursday on Lake Peigneur, the brackish water smooth and grey beneath a mild Louisiana autumn fog. You are drifting in a small aluminum skiff near the middle of the shallow, ten-foot-deep lake when a sudden metallic shudder cuts through the stillness. A few hundred yards away, the massive Texaco oil drilling platform tilts abruptly to the side, its heavy steel scaffolding groaning against an unseen pull from below.
Within minutes, the calm surface around the rig begins to bowl inward. A terrifying, wide-swirling vortex takes shape in the center of the lake, churning up black silt, bayou vegetation, and violent white foam. You yank frantically on your outboard motor's pull cord, the engine sputtering to life just as the pull of the current begins to drag your skiff backward. Looking over your shoulder as you throttle toward the shore, you watch in disbelief as the multi-million-dollar oil derrick gets sucked completely beneath the mud, disappearing into the water like a stone. Along the banks, long strips of land collapse into the growing abyss, taking oak trees, docks, and nearby barges down into the spiraling void, while distant salt mine air shafts belch towering gouts of pressurized water and mist hundreds of feet into the sky.
What actually happened?
On November 20, 1980, an oil drilling crew working for Texaco miscalculated their coordinates while drilling in the shallow bed of Lake Peigneur, accidentally puncturing the ceiling of the Diamond Crystal salt mine operating directly underneath the lake. The 14-inch drill bit created a hole that quickly enlarged as the lake's water dissolved the soft salt pillars supporting the cavernous underground shafts. Within hours, all 3.5 billion gallons of water drained into the mine, creating a massive whirlpool that swallowed the oil rig, eleven barges, a tugboat, sixty acres of surrounding land, and part of a nearby botanical garden. The suction was so powerful that it reversed the flow of the Delcambre Canal, pulling Gulf saltwater inland and creating a temporary 150-foot waterfall. Amazingly, through swift evacuation responses, all 55 miners underground and the 12 oil rig workers escaped with zero fatalities.