O’FALLON, Mo. (KTVI) – A nearby security camera captured the moment an O’Fallon, Missouri home was leveled in an explosion just before noon Tuesday.

A third-party contractor working in the area struck a Spire gas line, according to officials with Spire, a public utility company in St. Louis. The contractor immediately contacted Spire and the O’Fallon Fire Department. They worked with police to evacuate nearby residents just before 11:43 a.m. when the house exploded.

“We got a call around 10:30 for a line that had been hit, and so working with Spire, they didn’t like what they were seeing. So we went door to door to evacuate people,” said Assistant Chief Andy Parrish with the O’Fallon Fire Protection District.

VIDEO AT LINK: https://wgntv.com/news/video-s...xploded-in-missouri/

That's going to be an expensive mistake.

That's an oh fuck moment.
2 years ago I was putting in a garage/shop & tied into the gas/elec on my house. The contractor rolled the mini excavator up, shut it off, probed for where the line was going into the meter & we hear 'woosh' when he pulled it up. Pushed it back down & his eyes where as big as dinner plates.
That was a fun day.

New home and new cars.

Still going to suck living in a hotel for 6 months.

One of my nephews was doing construction in a home when they purged the gas line and caused an explosion. No one bothered to clear the house or announce purging was happening... Hopefully someone will get in trouble.

Nephew got some bad cuts and concussion.

I'm looking forward to seeing this on Youtube, as I can't see it here in UK. Might be something to do with the fact that we are at least five hours in your future - who knows?

That's near me, and right around the corner from one of my employees. His wife works from home and felt it.

This is the second time in recent history that the company in question has hit a gas line causing a leak. All of their permits have been revoked, and they've been pulled off of the job until such time that they can demonstrate that they have a clue.

How does a gas leak outside the home blow up the home?

It infiltrates.

Natural gas rises, propane settles, and if wind conditions and terrain are right, gas can flow into the space and confinced, then pilot light smells the gas and "whoomp!"

When I was building, had landscapers planting palm trees hit the gas service main near the street in from of one of my houses, and the gas plume was about 70 feet up before it began dissipating.

We had no winds so it was not a concern, if it had ignited, it would have just looked like a well blowout on fire.

But we still evacuated folks and waited for the gas company to come and turn off supply.

They had guys out on jobs and someone was there in less than ten minutes.

If you have natural gas, or propane in your area, even though you don't have service, know which you have and if you are above or below, and how the terrain/structures would affect you. It may be a benifit. Sort of like knowing flooding hazards.

Looks like they effed up both neighbors' houses as well, initally at the explosion and from the fire afterwrads (neighbors house the the right looks totally charred).

Glad no one got hurt.

Call before you dig!

Would shutting down the main breaker and turning your water heater off before you evacuate help?

-TVz

If you smell gas, do not touch anything electrical, or flame producing. Don't even pet the cat. (yes, it could help, but it is a big risk)

Best get out, and don't waste time.

The amount of gas from a main line is significant amount, and you cannot know (unless you are an expert in such things) how long before it could go boom.

A good friend of mine was in S. Korea in the early 80s, and was walking into the office on base and behind another guy, as they opened the door, and the guy in front, flipped on the light switch, the gas ignited. The heater pilot light had gone out and the temps dropped so the heater was on (supplying gas).

They were blown out of the building, guy in front was killed and Bo suffered severe burns to his head, neck, face and hands.

Back in my construction laborer days our backhoe guy was digging when we heard a pop (bucket severing line) then the whoosh from the severed line. 5 guys including me beat feet in 5 different directions. The boss was sweating the time it took the gas company to cut the flow.

quote:

Originally posted by gearhounds:
Back in my construction laborer days our backhoe guy was digging when we heard a pop (bucket severing line) then the whoosh from the severed line. 5 guys including me beat feet in 5 different directions. The boss was sweating the time it took the gas company to cut the flow.

We had a backhoe operator dig through a gas line once. Guy shut off the hoe, jumped off and bent the line over on itself just like you would a garden hose to stop the flow. I grabbed a scrap of Romex from the truck and tied it down. Good thing the line was plastic and that operator kept his senses about him but his adrenaline must have been flowing because plastic gas line is thick and stiff.

Those construction guys are surprisingly sloppy about that stuff. I knew a lawyer who made a lot of money suing construction companies for a giant communications company when the construction guys cut their cables. It was very often city and county maintenance departments who just fired up the backhoe and started digging.

My previous neighborhood had a house explode from an underground natural gas pipeline to the home a few years ago. The occupants kept reporting a natural gas smell, it would be investigated, and nothing found reported. It finally blew up, totally decimated it, and severely damaged the multiple neighbor's homes. It was really bad. The Natural Gas leaked and leaked and leaked underground, and under the foundations of homes, until it finally ignited.

The neighborhood, Walnut Creek, when originally built 40-45 years ago, had defectively manufactured main pipeline and the delivery line to each home. It was ordered that it be entirely replaced with a new piping system. That's a huge and time consuming job.

I now live in a different neighborhood a few miles away. We have the exact same piping system here, so it was ordered that the entire piping system be replaced. They started a couple of years ago on the North and West end of our neighborhood but have not got to my end of the neighborhood. Again, it's a huge job, very messy, big pain in the neck, but it has to be done.

We are still checked regularly, one will see the Inspectors walking around probing the ground with some sort of sniffer.

That's why, I think, any flammable gas vapor "bomb" is so terrible. Once the gas spreads, and ignites, it's over a wider area.

I have known of a few Propane systems, such as rural or farms, where Propane leaked, accumulated, and when it blew up, it was an extremely large explosion, and totally devastating. In fact, I personally but casually knew a guy whose wife was allegedly cheating on him. They lived in a rural area. He waited some distance away when the cheater boyfriend entered the home. He was about 1/4 mile away when he shot the propane tank with his rifle. It not just blew it up, where he was 1/4 mile away it blew him over and burned the shit out of him.
.

quote:

Originally posted by sigmonkey:
If you smell gas, do not touch anything electrical, or flame producing. Don't even pet the cat. (yes, it could help, but it is a big risk)

Best get out, and don't waste time.

The amount of gas from a main line is significant amount, and you cannot know (unless you are an expert in such things) how long before it could go boom.

A good friend of mine was in S. Korea in the early 80s, and was walking into the office on base and behind another guy, as they opened the door, and the guy in front, flipped on the light switch, the gas ignited. The heater pilot light had gone out and the temps dropped so the heater was on (supplying gas).

They were blown out of the building, guy in front was killed and Bo suffered severe burns to his head, neck, face and hands.

I'm going to add a little bit to this as well.

Don't open any windows either.

Natural gas (And propane, and others) has a range at which it's flammable. Natural gas' flammable range is 5-15% concentration in air. So say you have a leak in your home or otherwise, and the gas concentration in your home is 30%, it won't ignite. But if you start running around opening windows before you evacuate you could bring it back down into that flammable range and could cause it to ignite if there is an ignition source.

In the next river town over, some fool punctured the gas line. They thought they did everything right. Well, almost. The fool before them discovered the easy digging was in the water line trench. So in went the gas line too. I don't remember what happened to puncture the gas, but the pressure regulator is inside the house. So full pressure gas started flowing. Everywhere there was water on the street, they now had gas. Even homes without gas service suddenly had leaking gas. Lots of gas.

They got everyone out of houses around there, no big boom. Just something else to worry about.