It was a beautiful, calm Tuesday afternoon following the long Memorial Day weekend when calls began pouring into the Mahoning County 911 Center. An explosion shattered that calm at 2:44 p.m. on May 28, right in the heart of downtown Youngstown.

"Any cars available for traffic? We had a gas explosion at 47 Central Square, 47 Central Square, uh, they believe that there may be people inside," the 911 dispatcher stated.

"All companies, all fire departments, and ladders respond to 47 Central Square for a gas explosion; multiple victims. EMT is en route," the dispatcher added.

"They may have someone trapped underwater, but they can’t get into the water because of the electric service. This has been an hour... we’re going on an hour and 20 minutes now, waiting for Ohio Edison to respond and turn off this electricity to this building where there’s been an explosion — there’s part of the building missing," the operator said.

The 911 pleaded, "This is a critical incident, and we need someone to respond — yesterday."

The natural gas explosion shook downtown Youngstown. 

One man died, nine people were injured and nearly 200 people living in and around the Realty Building were displaced.

While the cause behind this explosion remains under investigation, we know that the city of Youngstown contracted with local construction company GreenHeart to prepare for a city road project. During the time of the explosion, a project was underway to remove and relocate utility lines under the sidewalk in the Realty basement area.

The blast happened around 2:44 p.m., and early findings revealed that four workers hired by GreenHeart cut into a pressurized natural gas line with a reciprocating saw, according to the National Transportation Safety Board preliminary report.

After the deadly blast, a worker told investigators the crew was under the impression the gas was "dead," at least that's what they were told.

If enough natural gas builds up in a confined space, a single spark can cause an explosion.

Minutes after cutting into that line, the explosion occurred. The impact is still being felt months later.

What happened in Youngstown raises questions about how this could happen and why Youngstown is not alone.

"There’s a long history of natural gas explosions within residential buildings, as well as in commercial," Richard Kuprewicz, a pipeline regulatory advisor and investigation expert for Accufacts Inc., said.

"I’ve seen city blocks disappear," Kuprewicz added, "I’m not here to scare anybody. Natural gas in the right or wrong environment can be quite dangerous if not respected and if you don’t respect it, and it gets confined, some very bad things can happen."

OTHER EXPLOSIONS IN THE U.S.

OTHER EXPLOSIONS LOCALLY

  • December 1972 - Boardman, Ohio - on 680 - 1 Killed, 7 injured after a worker struck a line during construction.
  • February 1985 - Sharpesville, Pennsylvania - 2 dead after reports of a gas smell.
  • November 1986 - McDonald, Ohio - A natural gas line in a 30-block neighborhood malfunctions, sending surging gas through households - an eruption of fires rips through over 30 homes and a business, leaving $1-million dollars in extensive damage.
  • January 1990 - Youngstown, Ohio - YSU Campus - the explosion sent flames 100 feet in the air. The fire chief said a contractor struck a gas line.

The individual factors behind each of these explosions and what exactly led up to them are complex. One way or another, it usually comes down to human error, whether that's failure by the gas operator, someone hired by the operator, or failure by a third-party contracted by some other entity.

Third-party damage is a leading cause of natural gas explosions and a key concern in Youngstown's explosion.

Robert Hall, a former NTSB Director for 12 years and a Senior Tech Advisor for the Pipeline Safety Trust, told 21 News’ Madison Tromler, “They all certainly are factors and when we look at damage to pipelines and failures from damage, you have two kinds of two categories to look at. One is the immediate damage. So when a line is cut to the point that it leaks immediately, that’s one situation. The other situation is when a pipe is dented or gouged, but it doesn’t leak, and those can be unrepaired and sit for many years before they become a problem.”

Often, it's a series of failures.

For example, in the deadly East Harlem explosion, it was not just the gas operators' failures but also a city sewer line that was left unrepaired for at least eight years.

Another time, we saw a series of failures in Dallas in 2018. Work from decades prior left gas slowly accumulate. That then led to a leak that was not detected during an inspection just two days before a house exploded, killing a child.

"In my many investigations over the last 25 plus years, these aren’t one-off accidents," Kuprewicz said, "There’s a series of failures that have occurred that inadvertently get linked in such a manner that the linkage causes this catastrophic event."

The U.S. Department of Transportation agrees, stating "Severe excavation damage results in an immediate release, while less severe damage can weaken a pipe and contribute to a future pipeline failure."

Over the past twenty years, natural gas explosions have caused more than $5.5 billion in damage. Distribution lines span over 2.3 million miles across the U.S., outstripping any other country. The majority of damage happens on gas lines that run through cities and streets, delivering gas to homes and businesses.

 

So, how hard is it to keep track of all the lines running through the country? Very hard. 

"It is difficult," Hall said, "There are more miles of pipeline in the United States than there are miles of paved roads."

Yet, most people don't even know the natural gas lines are there. Pipelines are older than records and regulations.

"The natural gas legislation that really started federal regulation, started in 1968. There were gas systems going back, you know, to the previous century," Hall said, "At that point in time, you had kind of grandfathered in all of these gas systems, and so the records problem is really dealing with a lot of that old infrastructure that’s in the ground."

"It’s an enormous task to keep track of all that, and in the past, records have not been well maintained or did not exist," he added. 

CENTURIES-OLD CONCERN

Utility operators do maintain maps of where their property of natural gas lines are, but this is not public record, and operators won't necessarily have a record of every single gas line underground since the 1800s. As we've grown as a country, the U.S. population, technology, and activity have continued to increase, which means utility lines have, too.

Kuprewicz, the pipeline regulatory advisor and investigation expert said, "It’s not a new concern, but it’s becoming more because we’ve got more population, more population density, more activity, a lot of stuff going on. The telecommunication networks are going in. You know, they bore next to the lines. So, it doesn’t surprise me, on distribution systems in many states, that third-party damage is the greatest cause of hazardous grade one leaks on their system."

Because gas lines are older than the standards, the risk of people making mistakes that affect these lines is heightened over the lack of regulation and public awareness.

Individual states must follow federal minimum standards but do have the ability to go one step further and impose stricter standards.

Often, they do not.

LACK OF REGULATIONS

For example, in many states, including Ohio, Excavators or third-party workers are not required to have a license. Beyond that, there are ways around the laws.

 "Magic word. Exemptions," Former NTSB chairman from 1994 through 2001, Jim Hall said, "What’s the end result of that type of lax oversight? An explosion and unnecessary death."

 

What are the holes in the regulation?

You've seen the commercials. It's simple. In Ohio, you are asked to Call 811 before you dig. Whether you're putting in an inground pool, a septic system, or a fence, excavators must call 811 to mark utility lines before those excavators can dig.

Sounds simple. Here's the problem.

Loophole number one
In the case of the Realty building explosion, that was not considered excavation under Ohio law even though they were working underground.

Loophole number two
A communication breakdown made it so that even if the lines were identified beforehand - the workers may not have known there was gas in the line.

Loophole number three
There is no clear record keeping of the lines. Again, in the case of the realty building, it's unclear who was responsible for the line because one foot one way, it's the gas company's responsibility, and a foot the other way, it's the building owner's responsibility.

The United States Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration acknowledged that some states still allow exemptions from call-before-you-dig requirements, and eliminating these exemptions is a top priority.

"An exemption is a license to kill, particularly in the gas industry, because if the lines are dug and struck, you know what the result is going to be. So the state government and the local governments need to do more to protect their citizens with the amount of gas under the lines, under the streets, going into homes and all the communities... The problem you have is most citizens are unaware of where gas lines are," Jim Hall said.

Roger Lipscomb, the president and executive director of Ohio Utilities Protection Services that runs Ohio 811, said of the concern, "Most property owners, most homeowners, most people business owners, don’t realize that they own some of that infrastructure underneath their feet. How would they?"

The bottom line is utility companies get sold over time and records can get lost. Dominion East Ohio was sold to Enbridge three months before the Realty explosion. Avoiding third-party disruption of old unknown gas lines while managing new ones is becoming a larger problem because we don't know what lies beneath.

Overtime, old pipes corrode, new materials are used, and new companies come in, creating inconsistency with how gas lines have been constructed and maintained.

200 years later, Ohio still doesn't have a uniform standard for natural gas line construction.

"What does that mean?" Lipscomb asked, "That means that it could be anything out there. If there was a law that required this and everybody was installing these things to the same standards, 10, 15, 20 years from now, we would not have some of these issues that we have today."

Some of the safety measures being called for include requiring natural gas detectors in homes and buildings, updated technology, stricter enforcement, and better reporting across the board. So why don't we have these measures? Former NTSB Chair Jim Hall said it comes down to industry pushback over the cost, among other roadblocks.

"Lack of oversight, the lack of citizens activity and support, the lack of funding affects all of these things.," he said, "But in most cases, it’s a question of, 'nobody’s responsible. No one’s accountable.' This is a ghost of the federal government, or this is the state government, or 'we can’t do that because there is an exemption.'"

Plus, the danger is easy to ignore.

"Pipelines are in the ground. They’re out of sight," Hall added, "They’re a safety concern because they are carrying explosive product that can cause death, such as the situation in Youngstown."

NTSB INVESTIGATION

It's the carrying of that explosive product that has caught the eye of the National Transportation Safety Board. NTSB members were on the ground in Youngstown that night, combing through the debris. What exactly were they looking for and why? We traveled to Washington DC to speak with the National Transportation Safety Board member Tom Chapman, who was one of the NTSB investigators here in Youngstown looking into the Realty building explosion.

 

Madison Tromler: "You've mentioned that it's the presence of third party workers that prompted the natural gas investigation in Youngstown. Why is that?"

Chapman: "Well, we have jurisdiction over transportation and not just natural gas, but other sorts of commodities are transported through pipelines. So we do have jurisdiction, investigatory, jurisdiction over pipeline incidents and accidents. We were there because of the apparent involvement of third-party work being done in the vicinity of transmission lines, that is a very common cause of explosions when it comes to gas transmission lines. It appears that what happened was that contract workers were cutting away what they thought were old, inactive pipes in a vault underneath the sidewalk area, and they cut into a pipe that they had no knowledge of was actually pressurized at the time. It was an old pipe. It was still pressurized. We're still investigating to determine why that was the case."

Tromler: "How rare is that to see a situation where it was thought to be abandoned and it was pressurized?"

Chapman: "Yeah, I think it's pretty rare. I think it's a pretty unusual circumstance."

Tromler: "Do you think in a situation like this, it should be required by law, the people doing work, for example, in the Youngstown building, should have been required by law to call before doing that work?"

Chapman: "What we would say is, whether it's required or not, do your homework. Make sure you know what you're doing, where you're digging. The Youngstown situation — pretty unique situation — and I don't want to go too far into that, because we're still trying to determine what happened. I don't know that calling in advance would have made a difference there. They knew where the pipes where they were, they were seeking to remove those pipes. So what we're trying to find out is why that happened."

Tromler: "Do you think that there should be more statewide or federal regulation in regards to pipeline safety?"

Chapman: "There's a good bit of regulation already, some of what we see as common occurrences. Again, with excavation, it's people doing things. There's certain sorts of scenarios that are very common, excavation. Third-party excavation is certainly one of those. But I will tell you, one of the things that people can do that we recommend, that's very, very important, is to install methane detectors in their homes. We all have a lot of sensitivity these days to the importance of smoke detectors. 

Increasingly, people are aware of the importance of carbon monoxide detectors in their homes. Methane detectors are available. They detect natural gas in advance of it becoming a problem. They are available. They're increasingly affordable and increasingly effective ...we've recommended, since about 2016, that they be required"

Tromler: "What are some of the other changes, the other recommendations that NTSB has been calling for?"

Chapman: "One of the most important things that we have recommended has to do with those that are actually operating these distribution lines pipelines, and that is something called safety management systems. This is not unique to the pipeline community. This is something that's important with respect to transportation safety. Broadly, it's a top to bottom approach to safety, and what it does is, when it's working at its best, what it does is it ensures that everyone in the organization is aware of safety, aware of safety risks, identifies safety risks, communicates those risks that there's an assessment when new risks are identified. But this is something that we've actually recommended, be required on a national basis, and that would come through PHMSA, the Pipeline Hazardous Material Safety Administration."

Tromler: "This is infrastructure that is very old and complex. How challenging is it to track this all?"

Chapman: "Yeah it is challenging. There's two, two types of pipelines. There's transmission lines, which do exactly what they sound like. They're they're transporting not just gas, but other other commodities from point to point. And then there are distribution lines, and those are what they sound like. Those are the ones. Mines that bring natural gas to your home or to your commercial enterprise. It is a complex system. Some of that infrastructure is old. It requires maintenance. It requires constant attention to ensure that we're maintaining the integrity of those systems. It is a challenge, no question about it."

Tromler: "What is the NTSB investigatory process that it's going through? If you can just take me back from day one after the explosion up until the end, can you lay out the process?"

Chapman: "Yes, it's a very meticulous process. The first thing we do is try to secure the site, secure the evidence necessary to determine what happened, we engage in a very thorough interview process with those involved. We actually were doing interviews at the time I was out there. There will be follow-ups to those interviews if necessary or appropriate. There's a lot of work done to analyze materials. We have some amazing people who are able to determine sometimes very, very difficult facts based upon a review or analysis of the materials involved. So that is all going on over a period of months. Then we bring all that factual evidence together. There's a complex process that we engage in here, internally, involving multiple departments, where we analyze the facts we we essentially try to distill things down to their their very, their most basic, and then we put all that together into a final report. That final report comes out, we develop recommendations where it's appropriate to help ensure that these things don't happen again."

Tromler: "What are some of the questions that you're asking yourself?"

Chapman: "Yeah, I mean, our role is to find out what happened and why it happened, and then to make recommend recommendations to help ensure that it won't happen again. One of the big questions is, why those gas transmit, those gas lines were still pressurized. I am confident we will determine the answer to that."

Tromler: "Is it frustrating when you do have those potentially life-saving measures that you guys find after doing a thorough investigation, and it could prevent these situations? Is it tough to see that when it does take so long for them to be implemented?"

Chapman: It can be frustrating, but we're very, very persistent. We also are realistic. We recognize that sometimes these things do take time. Sometimes, they're very complicated and difficult to implement. We've seen some recommendations that have been on on the record for many, many years, finally come to fruition after sometimes decades. And it's a great sense of satisfaction. And I believe. Believe that we'll be able to make some recommendations to help ensure that we're available to avoid this sort of a tragedy in the future.

101 West is a news program is produced here at the 21 News studio at 101 West Boardman Street. This news program goes in-depth into issues facing the Mahoning and Shenago valleys. If you would like to comment on this program or make suggestions for future 101 West investigations, email 101 West by clicking here.