About every other day over the past decade, a gas leak in the United States has destroyed property, hurt someone or killed someone, a USA TODAY Network investigation finds. The most destructive blasts have killed at least 135 people, injured 600 and caused $2 billion in damages since 2004.
The death toll includes:
• The explosion that leveled part of a New York City block in East Harlem in March, killing eight and injuring 48 more.
• A blast that flattened the concrete floors of an apartment building in Birmingham, Ala., killing one woman in December.
• A flash fireball in 2012 that left an Austin man dead, a scarred foundation where his house once stood and debris strewn across yards of his neighbors.
The gas leaks that fueled those blasts are not uncommon. Neither is the cast-iron pipe — some of it more than a century old — that is the chief suspect in each of those three explosions and many others, according to the investigation by USA TODAY and affiliated newspapers and TV stations across the country.
And those totals don't include tens of thousands more hazardous gas leaks that were caught before disaster struck.
The causes are many and complex, and often outside of the utility company's control, from construction workers hitting a gas pipe while digging to weather. But one nagging concern persists: aging bare-metal gas pipes that are susceptible to rust and corrosion, which can lead to leaks.
A review of federal data shows there are tens of thousands of miles of cast-iron and bare-steel gas mains lurking beneath American cities and towns — despite these pipes being a longtime target of National Transportation Safety Board accident investigators, government regulators and safety advocates.Read the rest of this Series HERE.
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