Researchers found a build-up of hydrogen gas from a corroding cable in the area near the explosion.
An oceanographer who helped solve the mystery of last summer’s explosion on a crowded Rhode Island beach said there’s a very low risk of the same type of explosion occurring again.
This comes as the U.S. Coast Guard has released a list with dozens of sites in the U.S. where cables -- similar to the one that caused last year's explosion -- are potentially buried under beaches, harbors, and waterways. The 2015 blast at Salty Brine Beach in Rhode Island threw a Connecticut woman against a jetty ten feet away, fracturing two of her ribs.
Arthur Spivack teaches in the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island. He said that when his team of scientists went to Salty Brine Beach, they found hydrogen gas built up in the area near the explosion. It came from a corroding cable that had been buried in salty water for about 30 years.
"We collected samples deeper into the sand, and we found very, very high levels of hydrogen, consistent with what’s needed to have hydrogen burn and detonate," Spivack said.
But Spivack called it a unique event.
"Any metal that’s buried where there’s no oxygen will corrode and potentially produce some hydrogen," Spivack said. "It takes an unusual set of circumstances to get a build-up of hydrogen high enough. And personally, I don’t have any concern that these cables present a problem."
The cables were once used to power navigational beacons in lighthouses and buoys. Buried cables were listed in 12 states nationwide, but none were in Connecticut.
