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A few days ago a Bobcat crew was drilling deck pilings when they “nicked” a gas line running into the house. Thinking it would temp. contain the leak, they backfilled over it before calling the gas company. Gas leak found it’s way to a newly backfilled sewer trench and started filling the basement, concrete floor wasn’t yet poured. 20 minutes later (just as the gas crew was walking up to the house) the furnace kicked in. Plywood blew off the pony walls, every basement window exploded, and a 10′ rake wall above the leak blew off the house. Gas crew used fire extinguishers to put out the now burning gas leak in the basement, and unbelievably no-one was hurt.
It’s kinda funny how we’re always told to get locates and ensure we don’t hit any service lines. I think the utility companies should do some work in educating people on what to do IF you hit a service line. In this case, if the line would have been left exposed the gas would have dissapated.
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Indeed. Another point about which people need education is that the pressure in that line ahead of the regulator is maybe 40 psi, not the 0.3 psi they're used to in the house. Kinda like the difference between high voltage and 120/240. There's a quote from, of all people, Stalin: "Quantity has a certain quality all its own."
-- J.S.
*They also don't get out the word that you should stay two feet away from the markings, at least in Indiana. Any digging within two feet should be preceded by uncovering the line by hand. But I've never seen that on a brochure or one of the cards on the tool rental counters.Rich Beckman
*Several years ago a truck backed into an exposed gas meter in the loading area next to our office. The bay started filling with fumes pretty fast. Our shipper noticed it and got word to the staff to leave the building. Next door to our office was a facility were parents drop off their kids to blow off steam after school. Kind of an informal gym. I went in there to warn them to evacuate the kids. Several of the moms thought I was completely nuts and told me off. The more I insisted, the more belligerent the became. When the fire department finally showed up, one of the moms started yelling at the fireman. She called us a bunch of trouble makers and was upset that her kid's class was interrupted. You can educate all you want, but some gene pools aren't worth saving.
*We have to attend a utility company seminar every spring. All of the companies involved give you information like that. As far as gas goes...they tell you not to attempt to do anything with a leak. You are supposed to leave it alone and call for help! I saw about 50 pictures of disasters where people did not follow that advice. Same is true with power lines.
*Gas leaks are no joke! I just finished a house, one of three in a neighborhood, that were COMPLETELY DESTROYED by a gas line leak and subsequent explosion. The cause was a is-marked line severed by a tree spade. Thank god nobody was home. The spade had severed the line close to the house, and filled most of the home with gas. A spark caused by one of the mechanical systems ignited it, and completely desinegrated the first unit. The second home fell victim to explosive force and fire, and the third, my project, had lumber from the second home stuck in it like a pin cushion. luckily, nobody was home in either of the three, although a gas company employee spent about 3 months in a burn unit. he was in the trench when it blew!
*I doubt that gas would have just dissapated. Stanardsville, VA (pop. 250) was doing a little courthouse renovation around 1980. A backhoe was digging uphill from it, and nicked a natural gas line. Gas flowed down the hill, and through the basement door of the courthouse, until it got to the pilot light on the furnace. Turned into more than a renovation, and, they never did find the courthouse bell...
*I heard a story a few years ago about a crew installing water lines and fire hydrants. They were digging, laying the pipe and backfilling as they went along and nicked a gas line. The gas flowed into the water line, ignited and blew one newly installed hydrant straight up. It came down like a scud missle through the top of an expensive car. No injuries reported.
*Great stories...love the explosive endings....Can just see the pin cushioned house too!near the stream dialing 911 mighty quick after a prick,aj
*Billy: Standardsville must have been getting a propane heavy "natural" gas. When I was a kid, we used to fill garment bags with Texas nat. gas and fly them.
*While digging a foundation hole for an addition a backhoe operator unearthed and busted the main gas feed. We stood awestruck momentarily as this bent metal "snake" hissed gas. Then the homeowners father dashed off to the garage and ran back to the hole and jumped in with a little box in his hand. It was a bicycle inner tube that he fashioned into a plug and wrapped patch that managed to stop the leak! This spindly and quite old Italian immigrant was the "man" from there on out. He would visit and work in the yard and say things no one could understand but was loved by all. Oh yea, they never called before digging at that job. Call before you dig is the catch phrase, and its a part of the permit process too. No one got hurt and a disaster was averted and the gas company came quick too. But I always remembered the bicycle tube. And the little man who fixed the gas leak! Dan-O
*I think two years ago, in a new development in Northern Virginia called South Riding, near Dulles Airport. A newly built house was blown to smithereens. If I am correct, a young mother and maybe a child (kind of fuzzy on this) were killed. It was a very tragic accident. The explosion was due to a gas leak. I am not sure how the leak happened (again, fuzzy memory) but I think it was caused by some kind of digging.
*When I was a kid I would blow holes in a plowed field using 5-gallon oilcans filled with acetylene and oxygen and a LONG dynamite fuse. I figure one can was equivalent to 1/2 stick of dynamite. Nearest neighbor was 1 mile away and wondered what the noise was.
*When I was in the army, I was in a motor pool once when a dump truck hit a hanging gas heater inside the building where we worked on trucks. He broke off a 3/4" gas line just above the heater. He was kind enough to let everyone else know to get out of the building before he took off like a rabbit. The motor Sargeant panicked, and had no idea what to do. He started screaming for someone to go open the overhead doors to let the gas out so the place wouldn't blow up. Fortunately, everyone else was smart enough that they refused. I ran to my car, got a 12" crescent, and shut the gas off to the building. When I walked around the building to tell the motor Sargeant what I'd done, he looked completely shocked. It hadn't occurred to him to do that. I told him I thought I deserved an Army Commendation Medal for saving the motor pool. He just told me to shut up and get back to work.
*For that sargent to make the recommendation, he would have had to admit his failure! He weren't totally a dummy!
*Apparently natural gas dissipates fairly quickly as compared to propane, which "hangs" low to the ground, just waiting for a match. However, when NG comes blasting out of a severed line in huge volumes...
*When I was in my late teens one of my first apartments had a gas stove. It always worked fine and nothing ever blew up about it or got devastated. Kinda feel cheated on that now after reading all these stories. Some fellas -- that's just their life: the gas flows freely and there's always a working pilot-light nearby. No fun.
*A few months ago my wife and I were moving out of a rental into our new house. Due to some complications with the movers (b*st*rds never showed), we were moving ourselves with a very large van. On the very last trip out, I pulled out of the driveway and sideswiped the gas meter. Thinking I'd just bumped over the curb, I said the heck with it and was about to keep on going. Then the wife yells, "You just hit the gas meter!" Sure enough, the pipe to the meter was broken off at the fitting from the meter to the house. I killed the motor and put the van in park.That's when we heard the loud hissing of gas. We grabbed the cell phone and ran down the alley. After getting a few hundred feet away, we called 911 and told them what happened and they dispatched the Fire Department. While we're on the phone with 911, this guy walks out of his garage with a lit cigarette. When we told him what happened, he put it out immediately and said he had been thinking about quitting and that resolved it.Deciding we'd better let the neighbors in on the problem, the wife went on one side of the street and me on the other. Fortunately not many were at home. After knocking on about a dozen doors, I hear the fire truck in the alley. I ran back to let them know where the leak was. Waving like a manic, thinking they wouldn't want to drive right up to the leak, I'm pointing to the leak.They drive right up to leak and a couple of fireman hop out of the cab. One puts his thumb over the fitting and the other shuts off the meter with a wrench. That was it. I had never thought to just shut it off like that. I told them what happened and they said that we should contact the gas utility would be out to repair it.When the gas utility repair man came out, we explained what happened and our bad moving experience and after he fixed the broken fitting and tested it said the report would say that an unknown party had damaged the meter and we wouldn't have to pay for the repair costs. He was a nice guy.Needless to say that after taking out a mail box with the van's mirror a few days later, I'm no longer allowed to drive it.Nothing blown up, but it sure was exciting.Nathan
*In Spottsylvania County, VA, according to newspaper reports, the followoing happened:No Cuts was called to mark utilities comming to a house. The homwowner was upgrading his electrical service or moving his service entrance. After the utilities were marked, he drove a ground rod for the new service. Next morning he went back to work on the house and started a saw. Explosion, fire, and dead homeowner. He had cut the gas line with the ground rod, and the gas seeped into the house during the night. No Cuts was found guilty of negligance, they had the gas line marked as being on the other side of the house.Normally natural gas rises out of holes, therefore not covering them allows the gas to rise out of the hole and dissapate. Propane is heavier than air and clings to the ground, like gasoline vapor does. People who work on natural gas lines are scared of propane because it "acts" different. Natural gas companies will add propane to the natural gas when they are about to exced their demand capacity from the major pipeline. Frank DuVal
*I just remembered another similar incident, but one with a funny ending.Many years ago, I was moving into a new apartment. I borrowed one of the vans from work to do the move. It had just been serviced.I had just unloaded my second load and was going to drive back for another. I got in the van and tried to start it. It would not turn over. I tried a few times, waited, tried again. At this point a man walking along the street taps on the window and points down. I open the door and am hit with the smell of gasoline. There was gas all over the ground. I could not figure out how I had suddenly gotten such a leak. After some consideration, I concluded that there must be a leak after the fuel pump. I assumed that every time I tried to turn the engine over, I was pumping fuel onto the ground. Anyway, with gas all over the street, I went and called the fire department. I also called a tow truck.The fire department showed up in no time and proceeded to clean up the gas. They then had to wait for the tow truck. Apparently they had to ensure I remove the vehicle. So here I was standing in my new neighborhood, chatting with the fireman. One of the guys comes up and asked the chief if he should get some take out for the guys. After agreeing they ask me where the best place to get food is. This is late at night, by the way. I tell them there is a great Vietnamese place a block away that should still be open. The fireman walks down there. He comes back a few minutes later and asks everybody how hungry they are. He explains that they have a number of dinner combos, but they are not listed in English so he will just pick something by price and they can take their chances. A moment later the chief decides to march down to the restaurant and offer his input. He comes back a few minutes later laughing.Apparently this naive fireman had not gone to the restaurant, but had instead walked into a Chinese massage parlor and was busy negotiating with the 'hostess' for his dinner! He was struggling with which 'combo' to order.At least I managed to have some fun without blowing anything up.The next day I found out the mechanics had not secured the fuel filter properly when they had changed it.
*Can't remember the source, but I once read a story about a gas pipe on the house side of the meter being broken by some construction process. Some guy jumps in with a wrench and turns the supply valve off to the meter. Seems like the right thing to do at the moment. Utility people show up and say that is a dangerous thing to do as touching the meter valve with a wrench could have caused a spark due to static electricity. As I dimly remember, the story was one of those "here is when what seems to be common sense is not the right thing to do". Anybody heard about this one and care to explain?
*When I worked as a pipefitter, we had brass wrenches for working around areas with flammable gases. I assumed this was to not create a spark when your wrench slipped and it slammed into a steel pipe or whatever. I have seen wrenches of other alloys advertised as "non-sparking". Escaping gas could build up a static charge but if the pipe from the break to the ground was metal, it would seem that it should bleed off the charge. If the pipe was plastic, I don't know how much of a charge it would built up. I did a quick web search to see if I could find out anything, but the only thing I found was a book on gas safety from NFPA to buy for about $30...
*Quite a few years ago I lived in a rental run by a management firm. They had a guy who was their 'handyman' - Fortunately, I never met him.I had an old gas stove and the pilot light kept cutting out on it. I called the rental agency, and rather than agree to reimburse me to replace the regulator on the stove, or spend 50 bucks on a replacement stove, they sent the 'handy guy' over. He left a note on the stove explaining how to fix the problem. I wish I would have saved it, mostly as a threat to children as to what happens if you don't pay attention in school:Yore flam go out Bcus the oven to cold Leev the oven on low and it will stay on.Boy I'm glad I live in another state now...-t
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A few days ago a Bobcat crew was drilling deck pilings when they "nicked" a gas line running into the house. Thinking it would temp. contain the leak, they backfilled over it before calling the gas company. Gas leak found it's way to a newly backfilled sewer trench and started filling the basement, concrete floor wasn't yet poured. 20 minutes later (just as the gas crew was walking up to the house) the furnace kicked in. Plywood blew off the pony walls, every basement window exploded, and a 10' rake wall above the leak blew off the house. Gas crew used fire extinguishers to put out the now burning gas leak in the basement, and unbelievably no-one was hurt.
It's kinda funny how we're always told to get locates and ensure we don't hit any service lines. I think the utility companies should do some work in educating people on what to do IF you hit a service line. In this case, if the line would have been left exposed the gas would have dissapated.