re: Did anyone here actually witness the Lake Peigneur disaster?

While i was not there, three years later I picked up the contract to demolish the salt mill above it.

The real story will not be found on the internet. What actually happened is that the mine did not report true coordinates of a horizontal shaft that went to the edge of the salt dome which was leaking all of the time but barely a trickle. All the drill bit had to do was go near it and just so happens that two of the younger mine workers went to that end of the mine (where worn out mining equipment was abandoned) to share a joint during breaktime. They noticed that the trickle had picked was beginning to flow at a steady rate.

Instead of their little treat, they went to warn the rest of the miners who evacuated before the flow became a flood.