During the Exxon Valdez, responders had blasted sand with water to flush out the oil — a technique that had its own negative environmental repercussions.
There was fire and blasted sand, shrieks, a fallen tree, luggage reduced to ash, then a terrifying half-hour when she could not find two of her three daughters in the toppled lobby of the Paradise Hotel in Mombasa, Kenya.
The technique blasts sand, chemicals and water at high pressure into the earth to fracture rock and release gas deposits trapped in shale and tight sand formations.
This year, the company expects to haul as many as 230,000 carloads of fracking material, including blasting sand and steel pipe, an increase from 45,000 carloads in 2010.
The daily flights of the helicopters rattle the ancient walls and the winds created by their rotors blast sand against the fragile bricks.
The 2.3-magnitude tremor that shook the region in April, and a weaker quake May 27, forced Cuadrilla to suspend hydraulic fracturing, the process of blasting sand, water and chemicals into shale that has turned the United States into the largest producer of natural gas in the world.
So you will sometimes find LeFevre behind the counter of his restaurant, hairy and cheerful, blasting sand off scallop shells with a hose or scrubbing the clams for his bacony New England clam chowder.
I was determined to sleep under the stars, but after an hour of being blasted by sand, amid a light show of indeterminate origin and consequence, I gave in, and Ben Masters and I set up a tent in the dark.
Day blasted his sand shot to four feet and calmly sank the putt to pick up his first win since the BMW Championship last September and the $1.134 million winner's check.
The topsoil of some meadows was removed and buried, and buildings in the town of Chernobyl were blasted with sand and washed.
Deep inside the mushroom cloud resulting from the atomic blast, sand, metals, bomb materials, and atmospheric particles all came together and went through all the normal stages of matter: from solid to liquid to gas and all the way to plasma.
