Posted on 11/11/2012 8:35:35 PM PST by JerseyanExile
Splintered beams and boards on a piece of charred earth were all that remained Sunday where at least two Indianapolis homes were leveled in a blast that killed two people and rendered homes for blocks uninhabitable. A backhoe raked through the rubble in the middle-class subdivision as clusters of firefighters and rescue workers weary from a long, chaotic day that began late the night before waited for their next assignment.
The two-story, brick-faced homes on either side of those demolished by the blast were ruins. One home's roof was gone, a blackened husk left behind. On the other side of the gap, the side of a home was sheared off. Across the street, garage doors had buckled from the heat.
It wasn't yet clear what caused the blast that shook the neighborhood at 11 p.m. Saturday. Residents described hearing a loud boom that blew out windows and collapsed ceilings. Some thought a plane had crashed or that it was an earthquake.
Alex Pflanzer, who was asleep when the nearby homes were leveled, said he heard his wife screaming and thought someone was breaking in his house. Grabbing his gun, he checked the house and saw the front door was standing open.
"I walked outside and all the houses were on fire," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Of course, you can't see everything from the pictures, but it certainly looks like a fuel air explosion. Any type of man made explosive device would have left some type of crater as those explosions have equal energy in all directions. FAE's just seek equal pressure. If the house had natural gas in it, that's what it was I'd bet. Occam's Razor.
My guess would be that reports of gas problems/repairs might suggest a failing gas valve on a furnace or water heater, or, possibly a faulty regulator outside the house letting to much pressure in the house.
If no one was home and the basement and/or entire house filled, any speculation of ignition source? I'm thinking about my house and not coming up with anything. I could ignite it remotely with a cell phone or with a timer easily enough, which might well be why the investigation of the relatively obvious is taking so long...
There are several items in the home that could be a source of ignition without human interaction. Thermostats, pilot lights, etc.
I live in the area too. Why aren't they reporting this? CTE has repeatedly stated there have been "no problems" or "reports of leaking gas" in the area.
You explanation seems plausible. Why is it taking so long? Why didn't anyone smell that much gas?
That does not rule out previous gas leaks in the home now scattered in pieces.
Must have been a known gas leak. The FD was already on scene. One frame shows the flash initiation at a single point. And the reaction time of the firemen on the sidewalk is amazing! It’s almost like they saw something happening before the flash...
Many of the homes (they've said up to 30 total) will have to be demolished. Many of those houses have been either shifted off of their foundations or wracked in a way that has weakend the structure. Apparently, houses that just had their windows and garage doors knocked out, also are leaning and have drywall and ceilings down on the inside.
It probably was a gas leak.
It just seems to be taking a while to reach that conclusion at the scene.
Normally, I’d expect there to be gas leaks after the explosion, even if there weren’t any before, since some pipes are blown apart now, and fittings are gone, etc. At least until the utility crews can turn off the gas further back down the line.
If you didn’t smell gas before, I’d expect you to smell it shortly after.
As I said earlier, there was a tiny gas leak in a fairly large building where I work, and the smell was obvious. There was no doubt we had a gas leak, the only question was where it was coming from, and a sniffer found the source pretty easily.
Turned the gas on thinking it would only destroy the one house.
The Gas utility shortly after the explosion shut off gas to the area, eliminating gas to 30 homes, IIRC. They inspected the gas lines outside the perimeter of the home that exploded and found no leaks.
Inside the home, as you said, there would be lots of leaks now as the gas pipe and fittings are scattered over a large area.
The home was not occupied at the time and had been unoccupied for a little while, where gas could accumulate inside with little chance to notice.
There is a claim the house had problems with the gas heat the week prior to the explosion.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2958364/posts?page=39#39
Oven or stove pilot light, timer for lights (the owner was out of town), almost any relay not sealed or set up for explosive atmospheres, like the fridge compressor kicking in. If the mixture was just right, anything which might produce a spark.
I was thinking thru my home. It was built 5 years ago; about the same as the neighborhood where this one blew. Everything is all digital, including electronic pilot lights. Fridge compressors are sealed units.
Thinking more in terms of safety and getting rid of ignition sources. An old mechanical light timer is a good suspect. We do get our gas appliances serviced every 6 months.
Sure, but long before that, there were firefighters on the scene, and citizens there and you’d think they’d have smelled gas.
Maybe they did and our crack media teams haven’t interviewed any of them yet?
The power contact to turn on the compressor motor is not a hermetically sealed device. It will supply an arc in the atmosphere.
I spec electrical equipment for gas environments. A household fridge would not be acceptable.
After the explosion, multiple home sites were leaking gas. That is why they shutoff the gas to all homes in the immediate area.
***Nah ... these things NEVER happen ... never.***
It happened to us back in the winter of 1956. I missed walking into the blast by less than 1/2 second by not getting up when I heard mom walk through the house. KABOOM! She was terribly burned with 3 degree burns over much of her body and the trailer we lived in was almost destroyed.
The ball of flame rolled over us two boys in bed by the front window which was blown out. That window acted as a releif valve for the blast. The suction behind the blast was so strong it tore down the paneling in the house, and actually pulled drawers out of the night stands by the back bedroom.
We were living in a drilling camp in NW New Mexico at the time and all of the camp used natural gas right off the well with no oderizer in the gas.
A woman over in Oklahoma was horribly burned and died in the same way I mentioned. Her laundry used well water and there was a small buildup of natural gas which was vented to the outside. One day when she started to do the laundry, KABOOM! It appears wasps had built a nest in the vent pipe and blocked it.
Of course, and people and firemen on the scene will smell it, and they will naturally say it was probably a gas explosion, since they smell NG, even if that conclusion is wrong.
Yet we don’t seem to have that here yet, or if we do, I haven’t read any accounts. I haven’t read of anyone smelling gas after the blast, or before the blast for that matter.
Most people who are near an explosion, and smell gas, put 2 and 2 together even if they don’t actually go together. They usually can’t wait to tell the nearest reporter.
It would be a shame in this day and age if we still have these incidents with NG, that we can’t keep it safe.
These are one step up from “vinyl village”.
A fair number have partial brick the front wall.
I saw the logo for “Davis homes” on one of the insulation boards. They were a mass production builder here in the 2000s.
The houses on either side were totaled and houses for a block around had their windows blown out.
The cause was determined to be damage to a gas main out in the street done five years earlier by an excavator when the houses sewer line was replaced. The gas line eventually began leaking and allowed gas to migrate along the sewer line and into the house.
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