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 ...
That's nice. So what happens when the furnace or water heater kicks on? That's still an ignition source.
Electronic ignition on appliances just keep you from wasting money running the pilot light. They are not a safety device.
I expect that to be true. For a house natural gas explosion, the leak would be inside the house, with the customer owned equipment and piping. The NG utility pipes and equipment are outside the house. If their equipment was leaking, the gas would not have built up inside the house. All that assuming it was a NG leak in the first place.
Except for cases like described in post #80.
It can happen, but it normally is not the cause of a house NG explosion.
Prayers for the 2 people killed in this tragedy and for those injured. Prayers also for the families of all affected.
Many distribution systems have valves which shut off if there is a sudden flow increase/pressure drop in the line. If that shutoff works, there shouldn't be any more major leaks and a very limited amount of gas coming out of the line
That’s often true, but you don’t need much of a leak to smell it, and the reports are that gas to the homes in the area had to be shut off.
The auto shutdown is usually on big supply lines, I think.
Hopefully we will know the cause soon. I imagine residents in the area are on edge.
If however the leak was leaking out of the basement into the ground or surrounding the basement in the ground, there may have been no perceptible odor.
Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S) is nasty stuff with a very wide explosive range (4.3 to 46% in air), can be smelled at less than one part per million, and is dangerous for prolonged exposure above 100 PPM, and paralyze the respiratory system in short order above 500 PPM.
Low concentrations, had this been smelled, might have been displaced from the sewer system by a gas leak into the sewer lines, but, as you said, no one smelled 'sewer gas' (H2S) either.
For me, that would likely indicate natural gas accumulating in the building as the culprit.
No way meth manufacture could make that big a bang.
The house that exploded was occupied. The owners are the two people who died.
The house next door was unoccupied. It was also totally leveled.
I know this to be true because our very good friends live two houses down. Their house is most likely a total loss.
So what were the names of the dead folks and the owners and who was supposed to have been the house?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2958364/posts?page=39#39
Earlier FR claim is different.
- - - -
Couple was on getaway during explosion
http://www.wishtv.com/dpp/news/local/marion_county/source-couple-was-on-getaway-during-explosion
Sources tell 24 Hour News 8 that the couple living in one of the homes that exploded was in Lawrenceburg at the time of the blast.
Shirley Monserrate and Mark Leonard live next door to the couple who died in the blast.
A source, who is in contact with the couple, says Monserrate and Leonard were on a casino weekend getaway Saturday night when their home blew up. The source says a family member had complained about smelling gas inside the home but the source was unsure when that complaint was made and whether Citizens gas was notified.
- - - - -
There seems to be conflicting reports of one or two houses that actually exploded, or one exploded taking out neighbor’s occupied home in the blast.
“Brick facing.” That means wood houses sided with brick or even half brick. My neighborhood has a bunch of those.
I hope if I were involved in something like this, I can limit what I say to a news camera...
Owner: Furnace may be behind deadly Indiana blast
http://www.krqe.com/dpps/news/us/search-for-cause-of-deadly-indianapolis-explosion-nd12-tvw_4960241
The owner of a house that exploded in Indianapolis says he wonders if a faulty furnace might have been to blame for the blast that killed two people and destroyed or damaged dozens of homes.
John Shirley told The Associated Press on Monday that he received a text message last week from his daughter about a problem with the furnace at the house the girl shares with her mother and her mother’s boyfriend.
John Shirley says no one was home at the time of the explosion.
His ex-wife, Monserrate Shirley, declined to comment Monday.
Indiana real estate records show the house had been for sale for a year until it was taken off the market in March.
Furnace would be my guess. Saturday was beautiful (high 60s to low 70s). It cooled at night. I speculate that the furnace may not have run all day and then kicked on at 11:10 PM. Just guessing though.
FReepers are smart.
Someone who would do that probably wouldn't much care about collateral damage.
Turned the gas on thinking it would only destroy the one house.
I think people here locally are thinking that scenario but few have dared to speculate about it. For sale by owner and the owner was a nurse with a live-in boyfriend (according to local news). They were out of town when this occurred.
That's a news category I've not heard of before.
Was theirs the house with the basement or the other one (both are just lots now)? If true, it has been reported incorrectly in our media.
The owner is a different person. The house is lived in by his his daughter, her mother and her mother's boyfriend.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57548442/owner-of-exploded-ind-home-cites-faulty-furnace/
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.