Gas Line Explosion Today

Dateline: Middletown OH 3/12/06

Royal Rooter, a local drain cleaning company, received a call this AM to snake a main line going from the house to the street.

They hit roots and continued to grind them until raw natural gas started streaming from the sewer line. He told everyone to leave the house and went next door to get neighbors out of their homes.

3-4 minuts later the whole house exploded and blew the house next door off the foundation.

What happened?

Sometime in the recient past a directional boring company had pulled a gas line right through the main waste line of this house. The plumber thought he had hit roots and kept his maching digging until he cut through the plastic.

A security camera on a building next door caught the explosion. Check your TV news tonight.

I happened to be 4 blocks away. I heard then explosion but thought it was thunder as a storm was passing by at the same time until the emergency vehicles started pouring in.

It's not all that uncommon I guess to have gas line bored through the outside sewers.

The last home I lived in, was 300 feet from the street.
It had been converted from oil to gas.

Years ago, there was a waste blockage, so I called a friend of mine that had the large snake with cutters.
Since it was a long line, he used the outside cleanout and ran the line out.



He too, cut a plastic gas line that had been bored through the clay sewer lines.

Since the gas was not contained, there was no explosion.
We did get the gas company out there real quick and have it repaired.

I've always wondered what would have happened if he had run the snake from inside the home.

Brings up a question as to libility.

My guess is the boring company is responsible to put the line in the correct place.

That is why insurance is so important.

Got this in the mail a few years ago after a house exploded in St. Paul, the plumber cleaning the main snagged a 60# gas line inside the sewer.

http://www.dps.state.mn.us/pipeline/pdf/Inspection/SewerPipeAlertNotice.pdf



I had a near death experience years back when I was an apprentice. I was ankle deep (in crap) running a drain machine (in a crawlspace) through the main out to the septic. I was pushing my arse off trying to get through a bad patch. Head kept coming back shiny, as I was in gravel.

Got the excavator to dig it up. Turns out the REA (rural electric) ran a 7700 volt feeder through the line, nearly dead center though it. I was about 2" from death. Good thing I didn't bust out the arrowhead.

I try my best to not clean drains anymore, lol.

cleaning drains--is that considered plumbing??

I wonder how much that is gonna cost the line boreing company???


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Dubdare..

"I try my best not to clean drains anymore.""...thats a good quote...

Its a 50-50 chance of winning, I get covered in crap, and the
customer argues with you if you cant get it cleaned out..
they want to call someone else....


I dont consider cleaning drains to be plumbing ,
just about anyone can do it......and I cant find anyone
willing to crawl in it all day long either....
or carry those heavy cables up and down stairs

journey man plumbers are primadonnas that simply wont do it..

they expect to be picked up in a limo every morning for work..


you got to find the right kind of person for sewer cleaning....
like the missing link...in the human evolutionary chain....
somewhere between chro-magnum and homo-erectus....

basically you need a big dumb ape that likes to walow in crap all day....


We still clean out small drains on occasioin, when we are slow.
but never the big line...
(so what does that make me----a chimp??)


their is good money in doing the job, and I suppose if
their is simply nothing else to do its better than nothing .....

but I would still rather pass on it...and go fishing..
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sewer

Mine was a large telephone cable, but it had a metal sheath on it, so it just resisted the cutters, and did not damage the cable.