Maddow shows incredible photos from explosive Texas 'fracking' accident

On Thursday night's edition of "The Rachel Maddow Show," host Rachel Maddow discussed a recent accident in a Texas "fracking" site and showed photos of the scene.

"Oil and gas workers were 'fracking' in Hemphill County, Texas," Maddow said. "That is, they were forcing water and other chemicals through a pipe down into the ground at very high pressure to get at oil they otherwise couldn't get at. But in this case, something went wrong."

An explosion launched the so-called "frac stack," the pipe for drilling and flushing water and debris from the drilling site, into the air like a javelin. It came down on nearby truck, impaling the vehicle.

No one was killed. One worker suffered a concussion, but thankfully there were no other injuries.

The "frac stack," Maddow said, is kind of like the blowout preventer that failed on the Deep Water Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

In onshore drilling, the "frac stack" is supposed to function like a blowout preventer, to keep the well-head under control in the event of an accident. The stack was blown completely out of the well-head.

Maddow called it a "spectacular and highly visible failure in the world's most profitable industry."

Watch the video, embedded via MSNBC, below:

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