Seems like about once a week, the evening news reports another house somewhere in the US has exploded due to a natural gas leak. I don’t recall hearing about these with such frequency in the past, even as recently as ten years ago. Sometimes the explosion is captured on a neighbor’s home surveillance camera; in these instances, the footage itself makes for a nice sensational news story. But these are exceptions; most of the time, the only video footage is of the local FD hosing down a smoldering pile of shattered plywood and 2x4s.
There was also this bizarre maintenance mishap that exploded and/or burned about 40 houses about a year and a half ago, but that appears to have been a one-time thing.
So what’s up? Is the media just better these days about ferreting out sensational news bits like this, or are houses actually blowing up more often than they used to?
Yes to the bolded. More cameras out there in public, more hours of news to fill (not to mention web-based news). Perhaps the latter factor also leads to what would’ve been local news in the 1970s-80s turning into national news in recent years.
I agree. My wife worked for a utility and they were always concerned about gas leaks and suffered several examples. Since that was just a medium-sized local utility I would say that the nation had explosions 100 times as frequently.
They make great visuals for the news and so they are undoubtedly reported upon more frequently than regular fires, which are far more numerous and result in more damage and deaths. Much like how every plane crash gets exhaustive coverage but most of the 30+ thousand deaths in car crashes don’t. People are psychologically more concerned by fears of occasional spectacular catastrophes than to everyday routine low-level tragedies.
One-time? Maybe it only happened once in Merrimack Valley. There was that Sept. 2010 pipeline explosion in San Bruno, CA, that leveled 35 homes and damaged many others, killed 8 people, and others were gruesomely burned. The news reports never say much, if anything, about the gruesomely maimed survivors, all they give is death counts.
Also, the news reporters/editors etc are trolling social media for these. At my store, if we post something on our facebook page that’s even the least bit newsworthy (for example ‘here’s some footage of someone shoplifting, anyone know him?’ someone from one or two news stations will contact us and ask us if they can run a story about it that night.
Pre-social media, the only way that would have happened is if we reached out to the news stations and asked them to broadcast something.
I live in a condominium complex, and we used to smell gas in an area quite close to our unit. Not all the time, but when we did, it was rather strong. I reported it to the gas company, who immediately sent a guy out. At first, he couldn’t find it, but then he said it was really spewing when he located the leak. Scary! He said because gas is lighter than air, we only smelled at certain times (like early morning and early evening) when the air was lighter, and the gas could spread more.
One thing I’ll say about our gas company, they are very responsive. We got a new stove once, and my sister thought she smelled gas, called, and the guy was there in about 30 minutes. False alarm, but it’s nice to know they’ll come anyway.
These things almost never show up on our news. They pick other clickbait stories from far away.
But I live not far from San Bruno. That one was thanks to our explosive power company, PG&E.
That’s absolutely got to be the reason. You see it in all sorts of things- kidnappings, shootings, and any kind of dramatic or sensational news.
I mean today, there’s a top ranked article on CNN about some crazy 93 year old geezer in Las Vegas who shot a maintenance worker in an argument about apartment damage. Why is this news? Living in Dallas or anywhere else outside the greater Las Vegas area, why in the world would I care? But it’s right there on CNN.com’s US section, and probably is in the main story rotation on CNN as well.
I don’t doubt that a gas leak and ensuing explosion would be featured similarly if it was a slower news day.
If you peruse the stats regrading things like number of fatalities from falling off ladders or kids getting caught in recliners you might be surprised at how often this stuff happens.
It’s just basic math regarding a non-zero chance of something semi-freakish happening multiplied by all the times and places where it could occur.
There are a lot of houses out there. There are a lot of gas leaks out there. Kabooms happen.
How much more (if any) cabling is being done in neighborhoods now as compared to the past? I recall a few years ago when AT&T was rolling out fiber/Uverse in my town there were something like three multi-home evacuations due to hitting gas lines when running the new fiber conduit, plus in my subdivision alone there were a couple more cases where gas to a house was cut off with no evacuation necessary (and within a couple days of them running it in my alley I noticed 4 or 5 houses had to have new coax run, presumably the conduit cut the old cable).
So if there’s more digging going on, there’s more of a chance of hitting a gas line, and a larger chance of something catastrophic happening.
Back in the first heyday of fiber being run all over the place there were a lot of tales like this. One I remember is the cable crew drilled thru a gas pipe and then into the sewer pipe for a home. They realized the horrible mistake they made and did the only logical thing: pull their drill (ensuring the gas had easy access to the sewer pipe), pack up and get away fast without telling anyone. House shattering kaboom ensued.
I’ve personally encountered major stupidity on the part of utility crews. Just last April a tree came down and took out 3 power poles The electric company did a really fast job in heavy rain getting new poles and lines back up. They wanted to put one new pole in a new spot. Drilled a hole. Hit my gas pipe. Their solution? Crimp off the pipe and dig somewhere else. Don’t tell anyone.
Next morning I notice the hot water is running out. I call the gas company. They find out what happened and grumbling ensues. The crimp could have failed and front yard kaboom would have ensued.
The biggest “oops” near me was a drainage crew working a block away hit an interstate gas pipeline. The noise, smell, etc. was amazing. We were in the helicopter view for the opening story on the 6 o’clock news. (Almost always a bad thing.) Took almost all day for the pressure to blow off so they could repair it.
There are stupid people out there. People who should know better.
I’ll look for you on tonight’s news. 