# Did a drilling accident cause an entire lake to be drained into a mineshaft? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 2, 1999, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-a-drilling-accident-cause-an-entire-lake-to-be-drained-into-a-mineshaft/5067 "1999-12-02T01:49:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 1999, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-a-drilling-accident-cause-an-entire-lake-to-be-drained-into-a-mineshaft/5067/1 "1999-12-02T01:49:00Z")
I read this somewhere. It was (supposedly) Lake Peigneur (sp?) in Louisiana. Early '80’s or late '70’s. Anyone heard of this–true or false? ---
**Author:** ![Ringo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/779978/32.png) [@Ringo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ringo)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 1999, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-a-drilling-accident-cause-an-entire-lake-to-be-drained-into-a-mineshaft/5067/2 "1999-12-02T01:55:00Z")
Yes. It was about 1981 at Lake Peigneur near Abbeville, Louisiana. Texaco drilled into a salt mine and the lake drained in minutes, quickly enough that a whirlpool effect similar to what you see when draining a bathtub was observed. ---
**Author:** ![Ringo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/779978/32.png) [@Ringo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ringo)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 1999, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-a-drilling-accident-cause-an-entire-lake-to-be-drained-into-a-mineshaft/5067/3 "1999-12-02T02:04:00Z")
The foregoing was from memory. If you had anything to do with oil and gas exploration at the time, you’d remember it. And, my little sister’s best friends family _had_ a house on the edge of the lake. Turns out it was November 21, 1980; here’s a [link](http://home.nycap.rr.com/useless/texaco/texaco.html). ---
**Author:** ![Yossarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/9de0a6/32.png) [@Yossarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yossarian)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 1999, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-a-drilling-accident-cause-an-entire-lake-to-be-drained-into-a-mineshaft/5067/4 "1999-12-02T02:11:00Z")
I’d like to chime in with my fellow geologist, beatle, and confirm this as a gen-u-wine non-UL. In 1980 my dad was working with Advanced Drilling Systems in S. LA and witnessed the hole thing. ---
**Author:** ![RTA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b4bc9f/32.png) [@RTA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTA)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 1999, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-a-drilling-accident-cause-an-entire-lake-to-be-drained-into-a-mineshaft/5067/5 "1999-12-02T04:03:00Z")
It must have inspired the lake-draining scene in the Bond film _View to a Kill_. That came out in the mid-ish-80s. ---
**Author:** ![theuglytruth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@theuglytruth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/theuglytruth)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 1999, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-a-drilling-accident-cause-an-entire-lake-to-be-drained-into-a-mineshaft/5067/6 "1999-12-02T04:28:00Z")
Wow!!! Cool!!! Does anyone have videotape or film of this?? ---
**Author:** ![NanoByte](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecc23a/32.png) [@NanoByte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NanoByte)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 1999, 9:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-a-drilling-accident-cause-an-entire-lake-to-be-drained-into-a-mineshaft/5067/7 "1999-12-02T09:07:00Z")
OK, did anyone check the direction of rotation of the vortex? We got right-hand rule people here what gotta know. Ray (Look, Ma, no lake! Still sounds Cajun catfishy 😉 to me.) ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 1999, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-a-drilling-accident-cause-an-entire-lake-to-be-drained-into-a-mineshaft/5067/8 "1999-12-02T21:12:00Z")
Certainly nothing like the Lake Peigneur story, but we have a local salt mine disaster story in my area. An engineering consulting firm was examining a local salt mine and convinced the owners that they could safely remove more salt by reducing the size of the support pillars. A few months later (fortunately at night when the mine was unoccupied) the entire mine collapsed. I’m guessing the engineers didn’t put that job on their resumes.