On November 20, 1980, workers on a Texaco oil rig situated in Lake Peigneur, Louisiana, noticed their drill bit stuck about 1,200 feet below the surface. After hearing loud pops and feeling the rig tilt, they wisely evacuated to shore. Moments later, the massive oil rig collapsed into the water and vanished.
The drill had inadvertently pierced the ceiling of the Diamond Crystal salt mine operating beneath the lake bed. This catastrophic blunder occurred because engineers used a Transverse Mercator projection coordinate system instead of the mine's local coordinate system, miscalculating their drilling location by roughly 150 feet. As water rushed into the cavernous salt mine, it dissolved the salt pillars supporting the ceiling, rapidly enlarging the hole.
The shallow 10-foot lake quickly transformed into a massive whirlpool. The suction was so immense that it reversed the flow of the Delcambre Canal, pulling Gulf of Mexico saltwater inland and creating Louisiana's highest temporary waterfall at 160 feet. Eleven barges, a tugboat, a botanical garden, 65 acres of surrounding land, and multiple mobile homes were sucked down the watery vortex.
Astonishingly, despite the apocalyptic scale of the destruction and the collapse of the mine, all 55 mine workers and 3 oil rig crew members escaped alive. The incident reshaped the region's ecosystem forever, turning a freshwater lake into a deep, brackish bay.