There is a law in the USA (and Canada) requiring
that you call for underground utility locations
before you do any excavation.

The pictures below are a result of a farmer using
a post hole digger without calling for "locates"
and he hit an underground, high-pressure cross
country gas pipe.

Had to be one of those gas powered augers, either free-standing or on a tractor.

Supposedly there was no trace of the farmer or his equipment...

It also took out 2 homes...
Take a look for yourself...















Thanks to GTcars for the pics

 

thats incredible

 

I would have loved to see that explosion.

 

 

+1

I feel bad for the farmer, but... DAMN!

 

ooops.

 

Looks like the fire from the gas that continued to flow did most of the damage...you can see the two sides of flame distribution. Pipe still level has small radius burn area, and blackened ground on other side of hole. Pipe that was lifted by blast hardly charred ground, but burned much more area. Also noticed the house was leveled by fire, and not a blast, as chimney still stands.

I'm sure it was quite a show until they got the flow shut off though.

 

Madre de Dios!

 

Oh just ruin all the fun why don't you.

Regardless, the explosion still had to have been fairly large. Look at the untouched patches of grass behind the trees. Those are pretty far out too.

 

Yeah, you're right. Between that and the amount of dirt moved alone it had to have been one of those booms you heard next town over.

 

I'm wondering how much of the large charred area was due to a flash fire after gas had pooled/crept out a distance. Maybe a slight breeze or elevation pushed the gas off to one side before an ignition source was found. After that, it was game on for the source to act like a massive blow-torch.

Something like this... [0:34] Even this, you can see the secondary explosion of the gas in the wood pile.

 

This EXACT thing almost happened to me when I worked for my father in law digging holes for fences years ago. I showed up at this guys house, and everything looked like it was marked properly. HOWEVER, the guy guy who was in charge of marking the lines under ground FORGOT to mark the gas lines. I asked him repeatedly are you sure there are no gas lines here and he was like yeah yeah yeah.

4 or 5th hole im digging, i hear a clank, then i smell gas. I drove the tractor up to the truck and got the hell out of there with in 3 minutes. Thankfully, the city was notified immediately and the workers cut off the gas in time before BOOM.

The guy from the fence company was fined 175k for the damages and negligence. We were unscathed in the whole thing because we covered our asses thoroughly.

 

Dude got ******* vaporized!

 

if it's more than 12" or not done by hand, you call Miss Utility.
http://www.va811.com/homeowner/Respo...8/Default.aspx

 

wow, yeah I get to dig & drill holes around gas lines everyday,
need to show this to some of the drillers who like to take shortcuts with the handauger/shovel

 

That's nuts.

 

holy shat

 

damn thats scary stuff. What's even scarier is that when marking things like gas lines, they sometimes miss. It's happened to my dad a couple times (hes got a construction company). I think he's only hit a gas line once and it was from improperly marked lines.

 

That's amazing. That is a serious explosion. The picture of that house being leveled is insane.

 

hol ee chit