New Delhi: Residents in Madhya Pradesh’s Kachhar village were jolted after a common hand pump started throwing up flames on Wednesday night. Bemused and utterly clueless, the villagers sent word to the department concerned. It is now understood that the local administration will send across a team to ascertain the cause of this incident.
A video clip of the hand pump spewing fire along with water has gone viral on social media. In the clip some villagers could be heard muttering in utter disbelief as the handpump continued to throw up flames.
The viral video clip shared on Twitter was tagged along with a post saying, “Hand pump spewing fire and water in Kachhar village, Buxwaha. Villagers have informed the concerned officials. Local administration is sending a team to spot.”
Kachhar is located 10 kilometres from the Buxwaha panchayat in the Chhatarpur district of Madhya Pradesh. Chaos gripped the village as flames started leaping out of the hand pump.
The clip picked up some villagers as saying that the incident was a miracle, while some others offered a more reasonable explanation saying that unusual fire discharge from a water source could be a result of a chemical leak.
However, one of the plausible explanations behind the incident can be a case of highly-flammable methane gas being released from deep underneath the ground.
According to Dr Gyanendra Pratap Singh, from a government Science College in Bhopal, the remains of plants and animals in sedimentary rocks (sandstone, limestone, and shale commonly found in Buxwaha) are deposited in a swampy area with a depression (fine sand) that produce methane due to a chemical reaction.
As a result, heating or burning causes the gas to reduce densely, which also causes the water to rise.