The site of a CO2 pipeline leak adjacent to Highway 433 in Sartaria, Mississippi, in February 2020. The white is ice generated by the escaping gas.US Department of Transportation

This story was originally published by the Guardian, and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

On a clear February evening in 2020, a smell of rotten eggs started to waft over the small town of Satartia, Mississippi, followed by a green-tinged cloud. A load roar could be heard near the highway that passes the town.

Soon, nearby residents started to feel dizzy, some even passed out or lay on the ground shaking, unable to breathe. Cars, inexplicably, cut out, their drivers leaving them abandoned with the doors open on the highway.

“It was like something you see in a movie, like a zombie apocalypse,” said Jerry Briggs, a fire coordinator from nearby Warren county who was tasked with knocking on the doors of residents to get them to evacuate. Briggs and most of his colleagues were wearing breathing apparatus—one deputy who didn’t do so almost collapsed and had to be carried away.

Unbeknown to residents and emergency responders, a pipeline carrying carbon dioxide near Satartia had ruptured and its contents were gushing out, robbing oxygen from people and internal combustion engines in cars alike.

“I worry we could see increased incidents now. The drop in enforcement is very troubling.”

“We had no idea what it was,” said Briggs, who moved towards the deafening noise of the pipeline leak with a colleague, their vehicle spluttering, when they saw a car containing three men, unconscious and barely breathing. “We just piled them on top of each other and got them out because it’s debatable if they survived if we waited,” said Briggs.

Ultimately, the men survived and were hospitalized along with around 45 other people. More than 200 people were evacuated. “It was like we were all being smothered,” said Jack Willingham, director of emergency management in Yazoo county, where Satartia is situated. “It was a pretty damn crazy day,”

The near-fatal disaster was a spur to Joe Biden’s administration to, for the first time, create a rule demanding a high standard of........

© Mother Jones