LAKE PEIGNEUR: The Day an Oil Rig Drained a Lake

Lake Peigneur was a shallow freshwater lake in southern Louisiana. On the morning of November 20, 1980, it was only a few meters deep, surrounded by fishing boats, wetlands, and the quiet industrial landscape of the Gulf Coast. 00:00 The Decimal Point That Started the Case 01:25 Why a Salt Mine Was Under a Lake 02:29 Three Companies, Three Maps 03:09 The Lake Starts Draining 04:51 The Unfinished Federal Report 05:17 Water in the Mine 07:10 The Miners' Narrow Escape 08:01 The Whirlpool Swallows the Lake 09:57 The 2.5-Hour Delay 11:56 The Canal Reverses 13:03 The Barges Come Back 13:55 A Freshwater Lake Becomes Saltwater 15:07 The Survey Map Question 18:10 Settlements Without a Verdict 19:29 The Salt Dome After the Disaster 20:53 What Remains Unresolved Then an oil drill went through the bottom. Beneath the lake was the Jefferson Island salt mine: a vast underground network of tunnels and chambers carved through a salt dome. A drilling crew working above it struck the mine from the surface, opening a breach between the lake and the empty caverns below. At first, the water simply began to move. Then the lake began to disappear. The hole widened as freshwater dissolved the salt. The current accelerated. A giant vortex formed where there had been open water, pulling down the drilling rig, barges, equipment, trees, and sections of the shoreline. The lake drained into the mine while the Delcambre Canal reversed direction, drawing saltwater inland from the Gulf of Mexico. For a brief time, Louisiana had a waterfall flowing backward. Every miner underground escaped. But the mine was destroyed, the lake was permanently transformed, and one of the strangest industrial disasters in American history left behind a question that still feels impossible: How can an entire lake vanish in a single day? This documentary reconstructs the Lake Peigneur disaster — the drilling mistake, the underground salt mine, the giant vortex, and the day Louisiana watched a lake drain into the Earth. Subscribe for more true stories from history’s greatest disasters, engineering failures, lost cities, eruptions, storms, and catastrophes.