Gas Go Boom!

[bassackward]

When I was in college in the late 80s, I had a summeer job at Bat State Gas in Springfield with one of my buddies. They paid us $5-6 per hour, but our job was in the Corrosion Engineering Department. Basically, all we did was take a voltmeter and test the voltage in the pipe to ground. I believe, that if a number of houses in a neighborhood all showed poor results (I can't recall a good from bad reading), a crew would be called to reinstall anodes, welded to the main supply line out near the street. The anodes purpose was to help inhibit corrosion of the pipes.
I wonder how well that monitoring has been going or has it been ignored. I would assume, there is a lifetime expectancy for these black iron pipes, anodes or no anodes. If the state put them all in in the same general time period, we may be seeing the aging process catching up to us, similar to all the bridges that have been failing inspections.
Now the utility companies can raise our costs to fix a problem they should have been expecting and had a plan for all along.

[BigFish]

Black iron pipes corrode amazingly fast in the ground......no surprise here they are having problems!

[5/0]

These explosions will help the reduce the price of natural gas

[american spirit]

i really have no insight as to why so many explosions as of late. but i'm terrified of my house blowing up as this is my first home with gas. especially since i've been doing some diy projects around the house.

is there a number to call to get an air quality test in your house?

i don't smell gas in my house, but you never know if there is a small leak that would cause problems if you go on vacation for 2 weeks.

[Swimmer]

Some of the gas customers smelled no gas prior to the incident. Most of the gas lines now are plastic. Gas explodes when the concentration is between 5 % and 15 % in an enclosed area.
Not for nothing but I know someone and he lived through it, turned off the flame in his gas heater and then turned the gas back on. He sat in front of the heater with the gas on, beer in hand, and flicked his BIC until it went boom. House lifted two feet off the foundation. Guy not only ended up divorced, but was committed to boot. It could be some of these people are doing it themselves.

[Raven]

that natural gas has no Oder and
the gas company ads that stinky gas smell to it

so it can be detected or traced or noticed .

[justplugit]

Gotta be careful what you do in your cellar.
I knew a guy who was killed working on his motorcyle when gasoline leaked under the gas water heater pilot light.

Same would go for a lot of other chemicals stored or used in the cellar.