Word: pipings
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...burst pipe in midtown Manhattan on Wednesday stirred the anxieties of New Yorkers who have experienced plenty of them since 9/11. But given the decrepit state of the country's urban infrastructure, the debacle could very well have been at a bridge in Boston or a sewer in Philadelphia. Indeed, the Manhattan steam-pipe geyser might be compared to the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and the 2003 blackout of the Eastern Seaboard: accidents and catastrophes that might have been prevented with the right funding and political priorities...
Urban planning experts say America's older cities are modern-day Pompeiis - within range of volcanoes of infrastructure failures like New York's. On Wednesday, a pipe, laid in 1924, exploded near Grand Central station, killing one person and injuring 30. Maintaining a sewer system is hardly a sexy political issue, but years of funding neglect and a subsequent lack of maintenance nationwide have left many of the country's engineering systems unprepared to handle future stresses. "We have an aging infrastructure in this country, and we are not doing enough to maintain it and replace it," said Sarah Catz...
...fail as spectacularly as it did Wednesday, when plumes of smoke billowed as high as the 77-story Chrysler Building. Deterioration takes place slowly, and often, when something breaks down, the impact is minimal - for example, wisps of steam coming out of a city manhole due to a leaky pipe. Bill Miller, who worked for over 30 years as an administrative engineer with the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, says the city tended to act only after the fact. "They respond to these systems when problems appear...
...city that knows it is a constant target for terror, the huge burst of white steam, a towering column of almost biblical ferocity, was enough to kindle several moments of panic. An underground pipe explosion near Grand Central Terminal during rush hour Wednesday evening spooked commuters and tourists alike in New York City. "The whole ground was shaking," one young woman heading away from the scene said into her cell phone. "It just came from nowhere," said another, "and then everyone was yelling, 'get out of here...
...nothing more than "a failure of our infrastructure," the mayor said at a press conference about two and half hours after the explosion. "No terrorism... No criminality." According to Con Ed, the incident was caused by an operational problem in the area. Millions of pounds of steam course through pipes below New York City streets every hour, heating and cooling thousands of buildings. They can be prone to breakage: in 1989, a massive steam explosion that sent mud and refuse several stories high killed three people. Bloomberg said that a 24-inch steam pipe, installed in 1924, had broken...