ya lead pipes DO NOT LEAK OR CORRODE idk why they are showing the older ones as a problem. when all the house they showeed that exploded well most of them WEERE NEW CONSTRUCTION HOMES. but im sure cbs has a developer share holder
@@downix yes but its usually on the fitting where cut pipes are. the fact they are replacing pipes with plastic pipes that have aluminum or that cheap alloy shi they use now IS NOT going to last NEARLY as long as the original pipes that were in place. gas companies DO NOT want to spend the money on the high quality pipes.. plastic HARDENS from water exposure and will allow water INTO the metal portion and will CORRODE it prob in 15 years maybe even BEFORE THAT.a and this news is just the beginning.. cheap materials are now recognized as UP TO CODE allegedly which iin my opinion is local govs taking KICKBACKS from developers which is a MASSIVE issue as more trac houses go up
I’m a security guard. One of the apartment buildings that I’ve been guarding for five years stunk of gas like it never had never before. I called maintenance and was treated like an idiot and told this stuff only happens in the movies.
Everyone in the building will thank you if you help them figure out what's going on sooo many landlord and their outsourced maintainance are criminally negligient
Observe and Report, only for those you report it to not to care and dismiss concerns. Then something bad happens. It's why I no longer work as security. I reported several times an area behind a bank that needed to be fixed else it could get robbed. It finally got robbed! I quit very soon after.
I have an education in the industry, I suggest you have one of the residents make a work request, it needs to be on paper. If it is for SURE a leak you need to call the gas company and they will come out with a tool that can sniff out the source. The gas has no smell, the smell is a chemical marker a chemical last warning.
I lived in a duplex that had a minor gas leak. Finally, after more than four years, I began feeling sick every time I entered the apartment. Had the gas company out twice before they found the leak near the water heater. Have had to live in all-electric places since then.
We finally started having the gas turned off everywhere we moved. It got ridiculous how the gas company put up a fuss about us turning it off but wouldn't admit to the leak until we called the county on them.
There is no way to have enough leak for an explosion without knowing. That is why they historically have happened in places like decommissioned warehouses, not residential. This doesn't add up
@SewingBoxDesigns in the winter when the next electric grid goes bad due to excessive like in the Dallas area in 2021, natural gas is an asset that could save lives. Simply turning the stove burners on medium will keep the immediate area comfortable compared to those without electricity and natural gas. I have experienced this on three ir four occasions in my area. And No, it wont put dangerous fumes in the air. A lot of us were raised with space heaters which were awesome.
@@TruthwillPrevail7938 Even if the burners look like they are burning cleanly, they are putting off gas residue. A person sensitive to petrochemicals like myself would not be able to enter your home. Recently a reporter measured the residue in the air from burning “Natural” gas. The results were shocking. More children have asthma if they live in a home with gas heat or gas cooking.
I knew a couple guys whos houses smelled like gas whenever i walked in. I couldnt stand it and yet they were fine. At one guys house i could smell it stronger whenever i walked down this hallway. Both of these guys refused to call the company and didnt wanna deal with it. They barely smelled it for some reason. I tried to tell them theyre gonna explode and they just dont take it seriously. I think the fumes start giving people brain problems after awhile.
I'm always afraid that I've gotten used to the smell or something, because that does actually happen. But usually if you leave for a few hours and then come back, you're supposed to be able to smell it like normal. I would send your friends this video
We repeatedly called Southern California Gas about a smell in an apartment we rented. The guy came out and implied I was crazy. Third time I said bring the sniffer tool or what ever it's called. The tool detected the gas leak. 🙄 And yes, it does mess up people's heads. But if you smell gas, call and tell the company to bring that device, not just send some one out who has gone smell blind to gas.
Our government hasn't invested in existing infrastructure in favor of the UN agenda that demands the elimination of fossil fuels, among other insane ideas. We have been betrayed for decades.
How many people take responsibility for their own piping, lines, plumbing, ANY of it? It's not JUST the counties. You own what's in your home, and need to be checked/repaired/replaced as needed. It's on BOTH sides. Look at how many people don't even bother cleaning their lint traps in their dryers.
The R.M. Palmer Co. explosion from March 2022 in West Reading, PA killed 7 employees. The gas company knew that the there was a defective gas fitting and didn't repair it. The workers smelled gas and went out and were told to go back in by the managers.
If I had worked there, it wouldn't have been for long. If I smell a gas leak, no manager or anyone for that matter, could force me back to work. Eff that!
Isn't that a major lawsuit? Under most state laws, if you report that you smell gas at your home/business, the gas company is obligated to come out and temporarily evacuate the property while they do testing/repair.
@ you have no clue . It has nothing to do with entrepreneurship . It about gas appliances having a gas leak alarm built in to it like we have in our homes for smoke. Those already have been invented
This is all propaganda to get people to go all electric Demonizing natural gas and propane. Natural gas has been in use for over 100 years and only now our house is blowing up at a high rate. They weren’t blowing up like this in the past.
I live in Los Angeles County in what was a 90 year home at the time (2017). I’d dug up my iron pipe water lines between the house and the street to install new PEX lines (the iron pipe had already leaked in various locations). The gas pipe was deeper but I noticed it also looked corroded. I asked SoCal Gas to replace it and they said they don’t do that until either someone smells a leak or it’s picked up by a gas detector. I wasn’t about to wait (especially since it’s most likely to fail during an earthquake, after which the repair backlog could be years). So I looked up their rules and filed and paid for a ‘owner funded’ repair. The new pipe is flexible so that’s one less thing to worry about.
@Shaker626 Well, if there was a better material, I’d have specified it in the work order. My biggest failure risk in my opinion is earthquake induced ground movement breaking a rigid material such as steel or black iron. High-density polyethylene (HDPE) is an industry standard used in 95% of European and US installations, the work was by the gas utility itself, and there was no incentive to cut corners because the utility wasn’t paying for it. Yes HDPE has failure modes (“A comprehensive review of polyethylene pipes: Failure mechanisms, performance models, inspection methods, and repair solutions”, Journal of Pipeline Science and Engineering. June 2024) but failures have been rare over the past 50 years. There are few perfect technologies. The utility doesn’t replace pipe until it fails and gas is sensed. So no change there. If the next owner doesn’t like this, then he or she can pay for their own pre-emptive repair. But by then there will be bigger concerns because extreme weather will be truly epic in 50 years.
What are you even talking about? Or are you just another bot creating divisive comments? This has nothing to do with capitalism or the wealthy classes. This is due to aging infrastructure, which more or less makes it a government problem. Same thing with the lead in our water lines.
I occasionally faintly smelled gas in a place I used to live, it was a 100 year old house converted to apartments. For a couple weeks I'd smell it if it was windy, since the place was very drafty. But it wasn't that bad, so I almost thought I was imagining it. One day it was suddenly very strong, and I called the gas company. They came out and found it was coming from the wall behind the oven, where the pipes went. The landlord and repair guy were very dismissive, and acted like I was overreacting even though I had paperwork from the gas company.
It's been happening for as long as people have been using gas for heating, cooking and lighting. Ideally, it should be extremely rare, but never is one hell of an ask for any human technology.
Electric range elements have been known to suddenly blow open an element and start a fire. A dryer vent fire is a greater risk than a gas explosion. It might not seem as dramatic unless it goes unnoticed until your entire house burns down.
I live on a rural dead end. I'm on some GPS and not on others. My neighbor has a heated shed across, which has a 911 number but is not on GPS d/t being a shed, & is billed to their house # farther down. A couple yrs ago we got a new road, involving pulling up the old. 811 came out and marked all lines except the main past my house and the line to the shed. I called the energy co - they said to call the outsourced Call B4 U Dig people. Back and forth I went. The road crew shows up and starts pulling road. I told them not all the lines are marked. They said don't worry, they don't dig that deep. Then why mark any lines? On the other dead end, the line is half exposed (I discovered it by tripping on it). I've reported it for yrs and it's still not fixed. The lines were laid in 1981. That's how people DON'T do their jobs. I find this attitude virtually EVERYWHERE. Wasn't as prevalent in the days of yore. The work ethic is pretty much dead.
Did you ever try contacting a news channel that helps fix viewer's issues? How about writing to your representatives at all levels, state and federal? The city and county gov, too?
@wownewstome I'd be contacting them every week for something. It's like pushing a rock uphill. On a small scale - Last week I ordered pizza. I tilted the box ever so slightly and the pizza slid out of the side of the box faceplanting on the kitchen floor. The front side of the box was just folded in under the lid with nothing to attach it. The manager informed me it's not their fault how the box was made, that there's nothing they could do about it and hung up on me. This is across the board in American culture. (I worked in healthcare - don't even let me start!) Back to the utility co. It took me 30 YEARS to get the wires to my house replaced. My electricity frequently cut out just brief enough I'd have to reset everything. I'd call. Oh, that's not our wire, not our pole. We quit owning the poles in people's yards. I'm like, Thanx for the gift. I'd call an electrician. We can't work on that - it's the energy co's. I called the public utilities commission. They couldn't quite comprehend without a visual. It's wires strung between two poles. Finally a couple yrs ago, my lights are on & off & on & off like lightning hit. I took the binocs out and looked - the wires had birdcaged. So I called their emergency # and, , , Oh, that's our wire. We'll be over ASAP. 30 YEARS. All I did was call a different dept. Don't even get me started on the mail, my health insurance, dental insurance, the snow plow, the trash service, the vet, FedEx, , , , 🙄🤕
@@wownewstome6123 rural, won't get much help, as the news channels typically aren't all that close. State and federal, again, rural, might as well call Dear Abby and she's been dead for years. City and county, that's variable, but sometimes helpful in my experience. Only sometimes though.
I work for an 811 company. Part of the problem is we have obscene work loads and cut corners to get our work cleared so we can go home. The company makes more money by giving more and more work to less people... I still try my due diligence but not everyone does...
The part of your gas line most likely to leak is the meter. In some jurisdictions, meters are permitted inside structures, in others they are not. If you can move yours outside your house or business, DO SO.
The pressure differential on either side of the regulator is very large. A leak on the low pressure side might take 2 days to fill the house to a dangerous level, whereas a leak the same size on the high pressure side could become dangerous in about an hour. That's another reason to move meter and regulator outside
Great. I inherited the family farm but it hasn't been good. Too many things needed replacement or updating. Now I have to add to my list replacing the underground gas pipes.
The above comment is a perfect case of a person being just smart enough to expose how stupid they are by commingling all infrastructure Into a into a singular value judgment speaking to age. Gas infrastructure is frequently older than structural developments.
@@thomasprislacjr.4063your comment is a perfect example of someone who got so upset you started fumbling over your words. Why are you feelings thinkers everywhere now? Yall are like rats.
@@princessnahema Those are not related. Trust if Ukraine isn't backed and Russia takes the black sea then the price of natural gas would skyrocket beyond comprehension. Getting the prices of missiles down is economics like taxing profits to incentivize lower costs for goods and smaller profit margins.
That comment is almost accurate. The pipe is installed within a trench, and normally the soil filling the trench is not as dense as the soil elsewhere, causing a more porous condition in that backfill which provides a perfect pathway leading straight to the house. What makes this especially bad is that most soils are very effective at filtering out the stuff that is added to natural gas to provide its tell-tale odor. Natural gas without that additive is completely odorless, so once that additive is filtered out by the soil, there's no way for a person to know that gas is getting into their house.
@@SolarizeYourLife no, but it lessens them, as many to most leaks occur at the meter. My father's meter was moved outside, due to the installation of the RF based reading equipment. We started smelling gas off and on, then increasing gradually and called the gas company out again. Finally detected, they found it was leaking at the outdoor meter and seeping along the pipe entering the basement. They got it fixed quickly, no more gas smell. At least they add mercaptan to give it an odor. That wasn't true for New London, Tx years ago. They got free gas from the oilfield nearby for the school, a leak in the basement of the school resulted in an explosion that killed many students. A cub reporter on one of his first assignments covered the story and was told, "We need help more than we need reporters here" and he rolled up his sleeves and helped dig out the children. The reporter went on to become nationally known in news reporting, Walter Cronkite. Despite covering WWII from the front lines, that story remained with him for his entire life. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_London_School_explosion
Utilities were given protection from competition so they could use the money on upkeep. that contract has become null in void over dragging the feet of the utilities
@@doublesunday1268 As opposed to what, a private company that will take your money and spend as little on you as possible to pocket the rest? Who do you think you have more influence over? The board of trustees at a private company or public employees that report to local community officials YOU elect? Public utilities aren't allowed to earn a profit. Ever received a check from your utility at the end of the year? When has a private company ever sent you a check at the end of the year because it costed them less to do the work you paid them for than they expected? 🤔 Please. Explain what a better solution to the "government not caring" about me is.
3 in 1 detectors detect gas depending where you place the unit. good to have on all floors.. plus CO detectors too. abandoned wells are also a problem.
PG&E recommends as you flee the house don't step onto the door mats, if any. Static is a potential trigger. Underground leaks tend to kill trees and shrubs, so that's a clue if you see this happening outdoors and it is where the gas lines run.
@kyleg3837 that's what wrong with free market capitalist country. It should be a condition of being a provider. Take it out of your trillions in profit
@@workerman6536 they're public utilities in many areas, so so much for profit. Instead, they get politicians pressuring the gas/utility commission to keep prices low, keeping voters happy, which means money now not going to maintenance. It's been an ongoing issue in many cities, Philly has terracotta water mains dating back to the civil war in many areas, similarly old gas mains as well. Before I deployed, a backhoe was digging for a leaking gas main and was fully involved in flames when the excavator broke the ground where the leak pocket was and a spark ignited the gas. The operator was badly burned, the excavator was destroyed and flames shot 100 feet into the air until the gas main could be depressurized, which took hours for the pressure to bleed down. Six cars were destroyed as well, but thankfully none of the row homes caught fire, as it was in the middle of a large intersection. Compared to water mains, which have destroyed homes by undermining the foundations, causing the building to collapse.
@@workerman6536if you think the government cares any more about you than the big scary companies than youre whats wrong with humanities intelligence problem.
Poor-quality components in gas appliances. Even a "Made in USA" product may have one or more critical components imported from a low-cost country, which then cracks and leaks after a few years of use.
Made in USA doesn’t mean crap anymore, all those corporations are cost cutting. Boeing is a prime example; only reliable USA products now are BBQ grills, cast iron kitchenware and Pyrex dishes 😅 Duracell batteries, Tesla, etc. are losing quality and reliability to their Chinese, Vietnamese, Mexican counterparts.
This November a 15 year old boy in Utah, walked into his home after school and the whole house blew up. Nothing was left. The home was not that old and from this report it sounds like he could have walked in, flipped a light or static from his feet could have set it off. I can’t think of much worse than having your kid blown to bits and having splinters left of everything you own. Especially just before the holidays, that affects everything going forward.
*YOU KNOW WHAT HOME EXPLOSIONS ARE A SYMPTOM OFF...???* cash strapped middle class - social decline - not getting the boiler etc serviced every year as you used to If you see an uptick in home explosions you will always see a decline in living standards - just look at the UK for a perfect example.
Old pipes, sure. But are better insulated homes an issue too? Hermetically sealed doorways, triple pane windows, etc., make for dangerous indoor air quality, including gas and CO.
They're blaming old lines, but many (or even most?) of the homes that have exploded, are not even 40 years old. Improper maintenance, including human error, seems to be what's on the rise.
I lived near a house that went up like this and the gas company certainly ended up on the hook for the rebuild in subsequent court battles about it, so it wasn't drugs like some commenter suggested these to be. lol. In my nearly 40 years living in homes with gas there's been two or three times it's been strong enough to call the company about the issue. The most recent one they busted my neighboring apartment's door in to get in to stop the leak. But never have I lived near a place that exploded from drug making. Yeah cooking with gas may be nicer and more reliable in a power outage, but it's good to understand what risk you're taking on in exchange for that. Gas leaks frequently enough that I don't find explosions happening from them a surprise whatsoever.
While living at my mother's house that had been built in 1880, I had to call the gas company several times because I had smelled gas. The worse one was when I had come home from grocery shopping, opened the front door, stepped in and smelled gas. Because the gas meter down in the basement was almost directly under the front door. Well they came out and neither of the 2 employees could smell it and their " sniffer" devices was having a hard time finding the leak too. Then they called in reinforcements and more employees from the gas company came. Finally after an hour they found the leak. On the pipe leading to the gas meter (but it was their pipe as it was before the gas meter). So it was a "95 % high hazard leak". And they fixed it. But their devices took over an hour to actually FIND the leak and the employees noses did not smell the gas either. Yet I had smelled it right away! How many people have lost their sense of smell due to Covid? Your nose can save your life! And unfortunately you cannot depend on that sniffing device because the device in the hands of the gas company employees took over an hour to find the leak and it was a high hazard leak!!
@@whereswaldo5740 some commenters want to over-simplify everything, even "oh, the US is so backwards with their natural gas infrastructure." Thank you for pointing out that there are risks with most, likely with all, energy sources.
Here in the upper midwest, blizzards and ice storms would occasionally knock out power, and it would sometimes be a week or longer before service was restored. It actually happened once at my moms house when I was a baby over twenty years ago. Put blankets up on both ways out of the kitchen, crack a window, and turn on the gas oven. The situation still wasn't good by any means, but it wasn't desperate enough to consider relocation.
@@atomictraveller the US doesn't import natural gas, we're an exporter. But hey, whatever floats your boat. Here in Pennsylvania, we shut down Three Mile Island, as it was more expensive to operate it at the time than to use natural gas to generate electricity. It's now reopening to power a Microsoft data center. I'm sure you'll have something to bitch about with that too. Which is funny, as I'm only a few miles from that reactor and nobody around here is complaining.
If you can smell mercaptan it may be a utility line leak. If it smells like rotten egg, or if there is ground subsidence, the problem is more complicated. Some hazardous gas DOES NOT HAVE A SMELL. Listen for changes in normal animal sounds (crickets, frogs, ground dwelling rodents) or behaviors. Spend as little time as possible in low-lying areas. Safe travels and happy returns!
I would LOVE to hear if GE has ever been investigated for their kitchen ranges LEAKING NATURAL GAS, from the burners by accidentally being turned on by touching them. I own a GE gas range and have complained to GE many times, about how easily these knobs can be turned on, and gas leak out, without even noticing them being on. I ended up having to buy a knob stop, from Amazon to stop them from being turned on, even when I was cleaning the stove after cooking. It is ridiculous at how easy these come on. PLEASE, investigate GE Kitchen Ranges for their inept attitude of their ranges leaking Natural Gas, when barely touched.
The metal, brass flexatalic hose connecting my gas stove to house hard piping developed a small leak from moving the stove out and back in over the years. When the gas hit the pilot light, it wasn't pretty. The fire dept came with sirens blaring.
this happened to me in the 1980's; the flexible tubing connecting to a stove cracked. Maybe there should be a program to replace these lines when stoves are replaced.
The old h2o heater in our apartment was stored in its own utility closet & belched enormous amounts of nat gas every time it started up. The whole courtyard stank of gas. The PG&E guys would come out & say yeah, it's an old unit, & then walk away. So remember kids: if you smell gas, yeah, don't worry about it.
Recently the youtube algo has been recommending videos of house inspectors doing some new home walk throughs, the quality is insanely bad, i mean the inspector even points out how a gas line was wired behind some sliding cabinets. Weird that no one really mentions new home construction, specially with all the videos out there, not to mention anyone creating a dataset out of these recent incidents would probably find a common factor really quick. Oh well, not like anyone is gonna do anything anyways, 34 trillion in debt and still counting. Housing is now a financial asset to park your cash if your wealthy.
I bought a house in 2017, all appliances were gas. I smelled rotten eggs once. In 2019 changed it all to electric and had the gas lines removed completely down to the end of the property. Couple years later bought solar and now I’m living energy free.
I have my own gas well that supplies everything in my house. The gas that is coming into my home only has less than one pound of pressure. BUT! Gas can be dangerous. The federal government can create a single rule that can stop these explosions. Every home who uses gas should have a gas detection and alarm system AND the system should turn off the gas when it is detected inside the home. I have a system that I created myself and it works VERY well. I test it every month. But still my nose is my best detector.
A house exploded near my house almost a year ago and the investigation found that the gas company made a mistake when they had been out earlier in the week. It's really scary.
Heat pumps are expensive and if using geothermal power they take up space outside the home. Plus most have expensive electric backup for extended cold weather.
@@don2deliver A ground source heat pump (what you refer to as geothermal "power") is basically built around a large underground cavity that has air passing through it. Dig down deep enough and it will always be around 55° F inside that cavity, which is then adjusted in temperature, up or down, for the interior comfort of a home. It's a rather high end approach and, for sure, you're not going to find too many systems like that in apartment complexes, where a lot of these methane explosions occurred. You would also have to build (dig in the ground) one for each family unit. Far more common today are air source heat pumps. There are ducted systems sized for single family homes, which look no different than a conventional air conditioning unit found outside, or on the roof, of many houses today . . . no underground excavation required. Also, the mini-split systems you may have seen at the big box stores are an example of air source heat pump technology. They're easy to install (some manufacturers even offer them as DIY kits) and are very affordable to both purchase and operate. On some homes, depending on floor plans, it's now common to see two or more mini-splits replacing a single large air conditioner/furnace unit that used to be connected to duct work. For those who insist on living where winters are miserable (I'm a recovering Pennsylvanian who relocated to Arizona 4 decades ago, so I don't look back that way with much envy,) there are resistance heating elements for the most frigid of conditions, when the air conditioner running in reverse when it's cold outside (that's essentially what an air source heat pump is doing,) isn't going to cut it. But there's also been a lot of work done in recent years to make heat pumps even more cold weather friendly, without having to depend on the energy-intensive resistance heating element backup.
I just bought a home that was built in the 50s. Ive had 4 leaks so far😅 get alarms, and have your homes tested inside and out with a meter. Its free to have the gas company come to your home for ANY PURPOSE
Our house has the best of both worlds. We have both gas and electric. I got permission to dig up our gas lines and replaced it with plastic lines, which was super easy to do and I learned most of it from RUclips and a lil help from my neighbor (we replaced his lines also). We have our gas lines turned completely off when we aren't using it, and only use them during power outages. We even found a propane powered refrigerator and put it in our garage to swap food over from our main refrigerator to the propane refrigerator if the power outage lasts longer than 24 hours. Whole project cost less than 500$. Not even 6 months later, we had a winter storm that knocked out power for 3 and a half days, and those new gas lines not only let us cook and have hot water, but also saved about 800$ worth of groceries from rotting. I consider the costs have already paid for itself, and it's one less emergency to worry about every single time a hurricane or snow storm comes.
I lived in an all electric apartment complex. Higher resistance aluminum wiring from the 1960s, and people hooking up far too many appliances and entertainment devices to extension cords... three fires later... I live in a house now.
Clueless on the dangers and pollution of electricity, eh. 23 deaths one year, 5 deaths the other, in a nation with over 330 Million people plus tens of millions of invaders. Yup those odds are intense ! .....
How about a few statistics to put things in perspective? Average number of house fires per year: about 350,000 (down from over 700,000 in 1980). Average number caused by electric problems: some stats say 24,000; some 46,000. Average number caused by gas leaks: 4200. (Note, that's 1/6 to 1/10 the number caused by electricity.) Average gas explosions overall (not just homes) per year: 286. Feel a bit calmer? You should. It's way more dangerous to drive or ride in a car than live in a home with gas appliances, statistically.
Angie, thank you for providing an excellent investigation to the gas explosion problem and offering a means for protecting yourself and your family against these kind of situations.
So, in your world, the local or state governments shouldn't do anything, but the federal government should provide you with gas, electricity and forks? Sounds like communism to me.
Another source of gas leaking happened in my neighborhood last week - a car ran off the road and into a building, severing the gas meter and releasing a cloud of gas that could be smelled for blocks. Fortunately no fire resulted. This is a genuine problem, but thankfully the smell of gas is pretty much unmistakable, so we have that warning at least.
It took months of complaints to get help here for a neighbor. Lines disturbed by developers. One man on the other side of our county did not make it. A leak happened again just days ago. New company purchased the old one from what I was told and no one seems to even know where the lines are but developing is rampant anyway. South Georgia.
Looks like the U.S. is starting to have their own Tofu-dreg moments. Granted most of this stuff actually lasted longer than those buildings in the east, but couldn’t y’all have… oh I don’t know… MAINTAINED THEM PROPERLY!?
Yep, it's happened in Westmoreland county, PA multiple times. Counting down my days. We need infrustructure. Neither party wants to fix the problem or hold companies accountable
This is part of why in my opinion our country needs a maximum wage too. It would put more money in the companies pockets instead of 1 persons. The companies would have the fund to replace and repair with newer and better materials. As a retired plumber i know for a fact of some of these material improvements
The house I rent was built in the 1920's. I only use my gas for hot water and cooking. I haven't figured out the heater yet, just put one of my dogs under the covers.
Back in the early 60's my Dad bought a house and it had a natural gas line to run the furnace. The DAY after he bought it he had that system and the pipe to the street taken OUT! He knew the serious danger that came with GAS. Thank you Dad for keeping us safe growing up. My Mom still lives in that same house today and she is 92. My Dad has passed on.
Also, the Harborton loophole protects. Fracking companies by allowing drillers to NOT DISCLOSE THE CHEMICALS THEY INSERT INTO THE GROUND AFTER FRACKING TO KEEP GROUND FROM COLLAPSING
Funny, don't get that much moisture from my gas stove burners, only needed to open a window to vent humidity once and that was with moderately high flames and four burners heating liquid filled pots I was cooking with. Water heaters and home heaters vent the exhaust fumes through a chimney, so there would be no moisture from them. And for the record, I'm in a studio apartment in a building that dates back to the mid-50's. Not a drop of mold. Plenty of neighbors that could burn water though, as well as a few that have put things on the stove to cook, then went out, resulting in a visit from the fire department. Which would happen with any kind of stove, because we've yet to idiot proof stoves. Personally, I'm not even fond of leaving a crockpot running when I go out...
@doublesunday1268 and you sound like someone that makes a lot of stupid assumptions. I use a wood stove. You know, the heat that involves the most work.
@@hope5443 you sound like the type who says stupid things, and then when other people read what you said you call them stupid 🙄 you said that this issue that is specifically caused by a lack of maintenance is the reason you don't use gas. You are a moron if you said that because you use wood instead. Fcking boomers.
I also have city gas as a backup but it cannot possibly get into my home without first going thru the regulator which lowers it to less than one pound pressure.
Low pressure does not mean low danger. In fact it may be worse, because the appliance may function quite well if the pipe is large, so the problem goes unnoticed.
Usually it gets into the home when there's a leak in a buried line. The gas then migrates through the soil through loosened or disturbed soil that exists along the route of the gas line, and it can travel that way for very long distances. And when gas migrates through the soil, the soil filters out the odor-causing additive, so by the time it leaks into your house there is no odor at all and you won't even know there's a problem. The risk of this happening is much less if the pipe goes above ground at the point where it enters your house than is the case if it enters through a basement wall, but since all concrete foundation walls have cracks which may not be sealed, there's still some risk, even then.
Thank goodness we've switched to all electric in our household. Electric stove, electric dryer, electric heat pump... natural gas is just too damn risky in a post-truth deregulated country.
When I buy home, it will NOT have any gas lines. No way am I spending so much time, effort, and money, just to lose my home and belongings in an explosion. Or even worse, lose any of my family 😢
Yes they should. Gas companies put an additive in the natural gas lines that has a distinctive odor like eggs rotting or something similar. They have a paper that you may can get from your gas company that have a scratch off off what leaking natural gas smells like.
Yes it smells like rotting eggs. It is distinctive and you can't miss the odor. They put an additive in natural gas so we can smell it and report any smells.
I know a few people who had covid and lost their sense of smell. I was happy mine came back a month after being sick, but some people never do get it back.
The smell of gas is very often not even present as a warning in these cases. Gas service lines are generally buried in a trench leading to the house. The same was commonly true of local branch lines, though more often in recent times those are installed by horizontal drilling. Trench backfill is normally looser than the surrounding soil, and even a line installed by horizontal drilling will have disturbed, looser soil right around the pipe. If the leak is from an underground line, the gas will move through that more-porous soil of the former trench or horizontal drilling and end up going straight to a house. Most soils are very effective at filtering out the additive that gives gas its characteristic odor, so when the gas moves through soil for any distance, the gas can end up being completely without a warning odor.
I lost a good friend yrs back to a natural gas explosion which occurred in the middle of the night. The cause was a supply line leak in their basement which killed him and sev members of his family.
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
Cut corners in home construction starting in the 90's is coming to roost.
Though true, time is the enemy of any quality construction.
@Myrkanth cutting corners shortens the time before the enemy comes knocking
ya lead pipes DO NOT LEAK OR CORRODE idk why they are showing the older ones as a problem. when all the house they showeed that exploded well most of them WEERE NEW CONSTRUCTION HOMES. but im sure cbs has a developer share holder
@4GWasFineduh Save they do, under certain circumstances.
@@downix yes but its usually on the fitting where cut pipes are. the fact they are replacing pipes with plastic pipes that have aluminum or that cheap alloy shi they use now IS NOT going to last NEARLY as long as the original pipes that were in place. gas companies DO NOT want to spend the money on the high quality pipes.. plastic HARDENS from water exposure and will allow water INTO the metal portion and will CORRODE it prob in 15 years maybe even BEFORE THAT.a and this news is just the beginning.. cheap materials are now recognized as UP TO CODE allegedly which iin my opinion is local govs taking KICKBACKS from developers which is a MASSIVE issue as more trac houses go up
I’m a security guard. One of the apartment buildings that I’ve been guarding for five years stunk of gas like it never had never before. I called maintenance and was treated like an idiot and told this stuff only happens in the movies.
Call a local gas company
Don't quit. People's lives are depending on you.
Everyone in the building will thank you if you help them figure out what's going on
sooo many landlord and their outsourced maintainance are criminally negligient
Observe and Report, only for those you report it to not to care and dismiss concerns. Then something bad happens. It's why I no longer work as security. I reported several times an area behind a bank that needed to be fixed else it could get robbed. It finally got robbed! I quit very soon after.
I have an education in the industry, I suggest you have one of the residents make a work request, it needs to be on paper. If it is for SURE a leak you need to call the gas company and they will come out with a tool that can sniff out the source. The gas has no smell, the smell is a chemical marker a chemical last warning.
I lived in a duplex that had a minor gas leak. Finally, after more than four years, I began feeling sick every time I entered the apartment. Had the gas company out twice before they found the leak near the water heater. Have had to live in all-electric places since then.
A gas leak for four years and You continued to live there not insisting something be done about it.
Maybe gas leaks cause Brain Damage.
We finally started having the gas turned off everywhere we moved. It got ridiculous how the gas company put up a fuss about us turning it off but wouldn't admit to the leak until we called the county on them.
There is no way to have enough leak for an explosion without knowing. That is why they historically have happened in places like decommissioned warehouses, not residential. This doesn't add up
@SewingBoxDesigns in the winter when the next electric grid goes bad due to excessive like in the Dallas area in 2021, natural gas is an asset that could save lives. Simply turning the stove burners on medium will keep the immediate area comfortable compared to those without electricity and natural gas. I have experienced this on three ir four occasions in my area.
And No, it wont put dangerous fumes in the air. A lot of us were raised with space heaters which were awesome.
@@TruthwillPrevail7938 Even if the burners look like they are burning cleanly, they are putting off gas residue. A person sensitive to petrochemicals like myself would not be able to enter your home. Recently a reporter measured the residue in the air from burning “Natural” gas. The results were shocking. More children have asthma if they live in a home with gas heat or gas cooking.
I knew a couple guys whos houses smelled like gas whenever i walked in. I couldnt stand it and yet they were fine. At one guys house i could smell it stronger whenever i walked down this hallway. Both of these guys refused to call the company and didnt wanna deal with it. They barely smelled it for some reason. I tried to tell them theyre gonna explode and they just dont take it seriously. I think the fumes start giving people brain problems after awhile.
They had Brain problems Before the leak
I'm always afraid that I've gotten used to the smell or something, because that does actually happen. But usually if you leave for a few hours and then come back, you're supposed to be able to smell it like normal. I would send your friends this video
People get "olfactory fatigue" if they keep smelling the same thing. After a short time, they can't smell it anymore.
@wms72 yes, its called acute Dumbassosis. Prevalent in the Gen X and Z crowd. Leads to Death in many.
We repeatedly called Southern California Gas about a smell in an apartment we rented. The guy came out and implied I was crazy. Third time I said bring the sniffer tool or what ever it's called. The tool detected the gas leak. 🙄 And yes, it does mess up people's heads. But if you smell gas, call and tell the company to bring that device, not just send some one out who has gone smell blind to gas.
What's causing home explosions!?
Corporate Profits > Life
Exactly !
Exactly
The capitalistic motive American style
Our infrastructure is aging especially within the oil and natural gas industry.
Don't kid yourself, it is all infrastructure including the Electrical grid, water mains and Bridges across the nation.
Our government hasn't invested in existing infrastructure in favor of the UN agenda that demands the elimination of fossil fuels, among other insane ideas. We have been betrayed for decades.
How many people take responsibility for their own piping, lines, plumbing, ANY of it?
It's not JUST the counties. You own what's in your home, and need to be checked/repaired/replaced as needed.
It's on BOTH sides.
Look at how many people don't even bother cleaning their lint traps in their dryers.
Is there no yearly Control or Check? In Germany i have to have a Gas Check each year and a furnace Check…
@@deedawson8122 they are well maintained and carefully monitored for leaks. No one has any worries.
The R.M. Palmer Co. explosion from March 2022 in West Reading, PA killed 7 employees. The gas company knew that the there was a defective gas fitting and didn't repair it. The workers smelled gas and went out and were told to go back in by the managers.
If I had worked there, it wouldn't have been for long. If I smell a gas leak, no manager or anyone for that matter, could force me back to work. Eff that!
The job market must be nice where u live . @@musicnerd72
Isn't that a major lawsuit?
Under most state laws, if you report that you smell gas at your home/business, the gas company is obligated to come out and temporarily evacuate the property while they do testing/repair.
I remember this story. So tragic.
I lived in reading and cut through the woods to see the aftermath about 20 minutes after the explosion
Those appliances should by law have gas leak warning alarms built in .
I bet president drumph will do that on day one. More red tape to stifle entrepreneurship.
@ you have no clue . It has nothing to do with entrepreneurship . It about gas appliances having a gas leak alarm built in to it like we have in our homes for smoke. Those already have been invented
There are detectors already that you can purchase.
@ thats burnt gas and not unburnt
@@leafbranch1872 your TDS is acting up again cupcake.
This is scary. My house is 75 years old and most of my appliances are gas.
Get the gas company to come out and check all around the inside and outside of your home!
just don't light a cigarette you'll be fine lol
23 deaths out of 330+million people....
This is all propaganda to get people to go all electric
Demonizing natural gas and propane.
Natural gas has been in use for over 100 years and only now our house is blowing up at a high rate.
They weren’t blowing up like this in the past.
But an old building is much safer??? I dunno. Newer builds were done cheaply though that’s for sure
This is why I was so happy to find out the house I wanted to buy had no gas in the entire neighborhood.
Yet.
I live in Los Angeles County in what was a 90 year home at the time (2017). I’d dug up my iron pipe water lines between the house and the street to install new PEX lines (the iron pipe had already leaked in various locations). The gas pipe was deeper but I noticed it also looked corroded. I asked SoCal Gas to replace it and they said they don’t do that until either someone smells a leak or it’s picked up by a gas detector. I wasn’t about to wait (especially since it’s most likely to fail during an earthquake, after which the repair backlog could be years). So I looked up their rules and filed and paid for a ‘owner funded’ repair. The new pipe is flexible so that’s one less thing to worry about.
If it's plastic pipe, you've doomed the next owner of the house.
@Shaker626 Well, if there was a better material, I’d have specified it in the work order. My biggest failure risk in my opinion is earthquake induced ground movement breaking a rigid material such as steel or black iron. High-density polyethylene (HDPE) is an industry standard used in 95% of European and US installations, the work was by the gas utility itself, and there was no incentive to cut corners because the utility wasn’t paying for it. Yes HDPE has failure modes (“A comprehensive review of polyethylene pipes: Failure mechanisms, performance models, inspection methods, and repair solutions”, Journal of Pipeline Science and Engineering. June 2024) but failures have been rare over the past 50 years. There are few perfect technologies. The utility doesn’t replace pipe until it fails and gas is sensed. So no change there. If the next owner doesn’t like this, then he or she can pay for their own pre-emptive repair. But by then there will be bigger concerns because extreme weather will be truly epic in 50 years.
@@edbouhl3100 Well done.
You could just go Homeless - all the money spent on them seems like a win/win looking from outside your golden state.
@@terrylandess6072 Thank you in advance for STAYING out of the golden state.
That C- grade felt generous, if he were brutally honest about the old gas lines, it would be probably a D-, maybe an F+.
I thought so too. If there's an explosion, automatic fail!
Maybe tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires will fix it.
What are you even talking about? Or are you just another bot creating divisive comments?
This has nothing to do with capitalism or the wealthy classes. This is due to aging infrastructure, which more or less makes it a government problem. Same thing with the lead in our water lines.
Lmao
Elon Musk needs tax breaks to help him stay in the lead.
@ lol
President Camacho will be sending his pick for Secretary of Education to figure it out 😂🎉
I occasionally faintly smelled gas in a place I used to live, it was a 100 year old house converted to apartments. For a couple weeks I'd smell it if it was windy, since the place was very drafty. But it wasn't that bad, so I almost thought I was imagining it. One day it was suddenly very strong, and I called the gas company. They came out and found it was coming from the wall behind the oven, where the pipes went. The landlord and repair guy were very dismissive, and acted like I was overreacting even though I had paperwork from the gas company.
Call the zoning board and the health department.
What's so scary is the fact that it can happen to any one of us.
Not to those of us who’ve gone all electric
It CAN?!?!?!?
That's why you have to maintain your house systems get them checked
Go all electric and you don't have to worry about blowing up. About to build my house and no way I'll have gas in it.
@@siennavanlife9502gas is so much better than electric for cooking and heating. It’s hilarious how low iq some of you are about gas.
This should never EVER happen.
U r right. This should never happen 😲😭
So you're saying this shouldn't be "ever-happening", as in all the time, but that it should happen occasionally? You're a monster!
It's been happening for as long as people have been using gas for heating, cooking and lighting.
Ideally, it should be extremely rare, but never is one hell of an ask for any human technology.
Electric range elements have been known to suddenly blow open an element and start a fire. A dryer vent fire is a greater risk than a gas explosion. It might not seem as dramatic unless it goes unnoticed until your entire house burns down.
The people responsible for repairing these lines are sitting on the fortunes doing nothing.
I live on a rural dead end. I'm on some GPS and not on others. My neighbor has a heated shed across, which has a 911 number but is not on GPS d/t being a shed, & is billed to their house # farther down. A couple yrs ago we got a new road, involving pulling up the old. 811 came out and marked all lines except the main past my house and the line to the shed. I called the energy co - they said to call the outsourced Call B4 U Dig people. Back and forth I went. The road crew shows up and starts pulling road. I told them not all the lines are marked. They said don't worry, they don't dig that deep. Then why mark any lines? On the other dead end, the line is half exposed (I discovered it by tripping on it). I've reported it for yrs and it's still not fixed. The lines were laid in 1981. That's how people DON'T do their jobs. I find this attitude virtually EVERYWHERE. Wasn't as prevalent in the days of yore. The work ethic is pretty much dead.
Companies have made it clear $$ is more important than people.
$$ funnels up, 💩is the only thing that rolls downhill in this situation
Did you ever try contacting a news channel that helps fix viewer's issues? How about writing to your representatives at all levels, state and federal? The city and county gov, too?
@wownewstome I'd be contacting them every week for something. It's like pushing a rock uphill. On a small scale - Last week I ordered pizza. I tilted the box ever so slightly and the pizza slid out of the side of the box faceplanting on the kitchen floor. The front side of the box was just folded in under the lid with nothing to attach it. The manager informed me it's not their fault how the box was made, that there's nothing they could do about it and hung up on me. This is across the board in American culture. (I worked in healthcare - don't even let me start!) Back to the utility co. It took me 30 YEARS to get the wires to my house replaced. My electricity frequently cut out just brief enough I'd have to reset everything. I'd call. Oh, that's not our wire, not our pole. We quit owning the poles in people's yards. I'm like, Thanx for the gift. I'd call an electrician. We can't work on that - it's the energy co's. I called the public utilities commission. They couldn't quite comprehend without a visual. It's wires strung between two poles. Finally a couple yrs ago, my lights are on & off & on & off like lightning hit. I took the binocs out and looked - the wires had birdcaged. So I called their emergency # and, , , Oh, that's our wire. We'll be over ASAP. 30 YEARS. All I did was call a different dept. Don't even get me started on the mail, my health insurance, dental insurance, the snow plow, the trash service, the vet, FedEx, , , , 🙄🤕
@@wownewstome6123 rural, won't get much help, as the news channels typically aren't all that close.
State and federal, again, rural, might as well call Dear Abby and she's been dead for years.
City and county, that's variable, but sometimes helpful in my experience. Only sometimes though.
I work for an 811 company. Part of the problem is we have obscene work loads and cut corners to get our work cleared so we can go home. The company makes more money by giving more and more work to less people... I still try my due diligence but not everyone does...
The part of your gas line most likely to leak is the meter. In some jurisdictions, meters are permitted inside structures, in others they are not. If you can move yours outside your house or business, DO SO.
The pressure differential on either side of the regulator is very large. A leak on the low pressure side might take 2 days to fill the house to a dangerous level, whereas a leak the same size on the high pressure side could become dangerous in about an hour. That's another reason to move meter and regulator outside
@@don2delivergood to know. My meter is outside. Is there any kind of detector we could install to flag a leak before it becomes a problem?
The possibility that your house could just explode like that out of nowhere is insane.
Plumber here. It won’t just explode. You will have a smell first. Stuff just don’t break like that and blow up. Unless regulators go bad at the meter
Thanks, but it's still terrifying to think about 😖
Great. I inherited the family farm but it hasn't been good. Too many things needed replacement or updating.
Now I have to add to my list replacing the underground gas pipes.
Which SHOULD have been done in the 80's but, we got GHWBush instead.....then the clintons.
Ok nancy
Blaming it on “aging infrastructure”, yet not one of those buildings that blew up is more than 25 years. 😂
Whow you know the age of all those structures. You are so smart.🦤 🧠
All those houses were upwards of 45 years old. Smh.
The above comment is a perfect case of a person being just smart enough to expose how stupid they are by commingling all infrastructure
Into a into a singular value judgment speaking to age.
Gas infrastructure is frequently older than structural developments.
@@thomasprislacjr.4063your comment is a perfect example of someone who got so upset you started fumbling over your words. Why are you feelings thinkers everywhere now? Yall are like rats.
My thoughts exactly.
Deregulations are great? Right? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight?
Our government gives all our money away. Billions for ukraine, 750 for hurricane victims
@@princessnahema Those are not related. Trust if Ukraine isn't backed and Russia takes the black sea then the price of natural gas would skyrocket beyond comprehension. Getting the prices of missiles down is economics like taxing profits to incentivize lower costs for goods and smaller profit margins.
You mean the ziocons like wolfowitz, cheney, and bush?
@princessnahema we can tell what cult sites you get your info from.
Yes deregulation are great
A gas pipe can leak under the road but the leaked gas can travel into the home along the small gap between the pipe and the earth
That comment is almost accurate. The pipe is installed within a trench, and normally the soil filling the trench is not as dense as the soil elsewhere, causing a more porous condition in that backfill which provides a perfect pathway leading straight to the house. What makes this especially bad is that most soils are very effective at filtering out the stuff that is added to natural gas to provide its tell-tale odor. Natural gas without that additive is completely odorless, so once that additive is filtered out by the soil, there's no way for a person to know that gas is getting into their house.
Boy, im glad Detroit has been moving meters outside and using all new meters and pipes.
That doesn’t stop leaks that can still happen…
@@SolarizeYourLife no, but it lessens them, as many to most leaks occur at the meter. My father's meter was moved outside, due to the installation of the RF based reading equipment. We started smelling gas off and on, then increasing gradually and called the gas company out again. Finally detected, they found it was leaking at the outdoor meter and seeping along the pipe entering the basement. They got it fixed quickly, no more gas smell.
At least they add mercaptan to give it an odor. That wasn't true for New London, Tx years ago. They got free gas from the oilfield nearby for the school, a leak in the basement of the school resulted in an explosion that killed many students. A cub reporter on one of his first assignments covered the story and was told, "We need help more than we need reporters here" and he rolled up his sleeves and helped dig out the children.
The reporter went on to become nationally known in news reporting, Walter Cronkite. Despite covering WWII from the front lines, that story remained with him for his entire life.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_London_School_explosion
Utilities were given protection from competition so they could use the money on upkeep. that contract has become null in void over dragging the feet of the utilities
Every time a company uses the "upkeep" excuse to increase prices, they just steal the money and run.
A public utility is a non-profit. If you let private companies provide public services, this is what you get.
@@robertcaplin6195 lmfaoooooo yeah cuz the government cares about you so much more 😅
@@doublesunday1268 As opposed to what, a private company that will take your money and spend as little on you as possible to pocket the rest?
Who do you think you have more influence over? The board of trustees at a private company or public employees that report to local community officials YOU elect?
Public utilities aren't allowed to earn a profit. Ever received a check from your utility at the end of the year? When has a private company ever sent you a check at the end of the year because it costed them less to do the work you paid them for than they expected? 🤔
Please. Explain what a better solution to the "government not caring" about me is.
Call the fire department when you smell gas. Apartment management doesn't do anything. FD forces the Management to do it right.
But call from outside.
@@kirstinmorrell Yes!
3 in 1 detectors detect gas depending where you place the unit.
good to have on all floors.. plus CO detectors too.
abandoned wells are also a problem.
Even new fracking
PG&E recommends as you flee the house don't step onto the door mats, if any. Static is a potential trigger. Underground leaks tend to kill trees and shrubs, so that's a clue if you see this happening outdoors and it is where the gas lines run.
I refuse to move to a neighborhood that has gas. House in my town exploded from gas when I was a kid.
Make the f ing supplier pay for upgrading their delivery systems. WTF
cost would be passed to the consumer
@kyleg3837 that's what wrong with free market capitalist country. It should be a condition of being a provider. Take it out of your trillions in profit
@@workerman6536 they're public utilities in many areas, so so much for profit.
Instead, they get politicians pressuring the gas/utility commission to keep prices low, keeping voters happy, which means money now not going to maintenance.
It's been an ongoing issue in many cities, Philly has terracotta water mains dating back to the civil war in many areas, similarly old gas mains as well. Before I deployed, a backhoe was digging for a leaking gas main and was fully involved in flames when the excavator broke the ground where the leak pocket was and a spark ignited the gas. The operator was badly burned, the excavator was destroyed and flames shot 100 feet into the air until the gas main could be depressurized, which took hours for the pressure to bleed down. Six cars were destroyed as well, but thankfully none of the row homes caught fire, as it was in the middle of a large intersection.
Compared to water mains, which have destroyed homes by undermining the foundations, causing the building to collapse.
@@workerman6536idiot read what they said. They didn't say it SHOULD be like that, they said it IS. ffs
@@workerman6536if you think the government cares any more about you than the big scary companies than youre whats wrong with humanities intelligence problem.
Poor-quality components in gas appliances. Even a "Made in USA" product may have one or more critical components imported from a low-cost country, which then cracks and leaks after a few years of use.
Made in USA doesn’t mean crap anymore, all those corporations are cost cutting. Boeing is a prime example; only reliable USA products now are BBQ grills, cast iron kitchenware and Pyrex dishes 😅 Duracell batteries, Tesla, etc. are losing quality and reliability to their Chinese, Vietnamese, Mexican counterparts.
Several weeks ago, 2 perished in Bethel, Ohio due to house explosion.
Really?😮
Bethel Connecticut?
@queens2nd2none Bethel, Ohio
.. but we still subsidized fracking gas and no one is charged with murder
This November a 15 year old boy in Utah, walked into his home after school and the whole house blew up. Nothing was left. The home was not that old and from this report it sounds like he could have walked in, flipped a light or static from his feet could have set it off. I can’t think of much worse than having your kid blown to bits and having splinters left of everything you own. Especially just before the holidays, that affects everything going forward.
*YOU KNOW WHAT HOME EXPLOSIONS ARE A SYMPTOM OFF...???* cash strapped middle class - social decline - not getting the boiler etc serviced every year as you used to
If you see an uptick in home explosions you will always see a decline in living standards - just look at the UK for a perfect example.
Old pipes, sure. But are better insulated homes an issue too? Hermetically sealed doorways, triple pane windows, etc., make for dangerous indoor air quality, including gas and CO.
Houses built before the mid 80s have enough air leaks to equal an 2’x2’ window (at least) open all the time.
They're blaming old lines, but many (or even most?) of the homes that have exploded, are not even 40 years old.
Improper maintenance, including human error, seems to be what's on the rise.
Could it be smart meters? They have a reputation for catching on fire.
I agree homes are sealed to tight.
Nice guess but you don’t understand construction.
I lived near a house that went up like this and the gas company certainly ended up on the hook for the rebuild in subsequent court battles about it, so it wasn't drugs like some commenter suggested these to be. lol.
In my nearly 40 years living in homes with gas there's been two or three times it's been strong enough to call the company about the issue. The most recent one they busted my neighboring apartment's door in to get in to stop the leak. But never have I lived near a place that exploded from drug making.
Yeah cooking with gas may be nicer and more reliable in a power outage, but it's good to understand what risk you're taking on in exchange for that. Gas leaks frequently enough that I don't find explosions happening from them a surprise whatsoever.
I've noticed these explosions only happened in larger homes with families that more likely than not, don't know anything about household maintenance.
While living at my mother's house that had been built in 1880, I had to call the gas company several times because I had smelled gas. The worse one was when I had come home from grocery shopping, opened the front door, stepped in and smelled gas. Because the gas meter down in the basement was almost directly under the front door. Well they came out and neither of the 2 employees could smell it and their " sniffer" devices was having a hard time finding the leak too. Then they called in reinforcements and more employees from the gas company came. Finally after an hour they found the leak. On the pipe leading to the gas meter (but it was their pipe as it was before the gas meter). So it was a "95 % high hazard leak". And they fixed it.
But their devices took over an hour to actually FIND the leak and the employees noses did not smell the gas either. Yet I had smelled it right away!
How many people have lost their sense of smell due to Covid? Your nose can save your life! And unfortunately you cannot depend on that sniffing device because the device in the hands of the gas company employees took over an hour to find the leak and it was a high hazard leak!!
Anyone alarmed over the EV fires?
And battery fires.
How many fires caused by electricity?
@@whereswaldo5740then the product shouldnt be on the market silly. thats a failure of the ceo.
@@whereswaldo5740 some commenters want to over-simplify everything, even "oh, the US is so backwards with their natural gas infrastructure." Thank you for pointing out that there are risks with most, likely with all, energy sources.
My home is all electric. Everybody always complain about all electric homes, I don't understand why after seeing this.
It seems u don't live near tornado alley or hurricane prone area.
Here in the upper midwest, blizzards and ice storms would occasionally knock out power, and it would sometimes be a week or longer before service was restored. It actually happened once at my moms house when I was a baby over twenty years ago. Put blankets up on both ways out of the kitchen, crack a window, and turn on the gas oven. The situation still wasn't good by any means, but it wasn't desperate enough to consider relocation.
@@leafbranch1872 I live in a hurricane prone area and no one here has gas. If a water main can be uprooted in a storm, so can gas lines.
@@leafbranch1872and what's your point?
@@uss-dh7909That's what kerosene heaters are for also when people don't have gas same difference
There is no “better life” in America, just a different set of problems that you’re not aware of yet.
having items from around the world consumed and delivered to your door for the machine god isn't "just another set of problems"
@@atomictraveller the US doesn't import natural gas, we're an exporter. But hey, whatever floats your boat.
Here in Pennsylvania, we shut down Three Mile Island, as it was more expensive to operate it at the time than to use natural gas to generate electricity. It's now reopening to power a Microsoft data center. I'm sure you'll have something to bitch about with that too.
Which is funny, as I'm only a few miles from that reactor and nobody around here is complaining.
@@atomictravellerseems like another set of problems is "we can babydick about literally anything"
They really, REALLY want to scare you into abandoning that gas stove. Keep the propaganda coming!
If you can smell mercaptan it may be a utility line leak. If it smells like rotten egg, or if there is ground subsidence, the problem is more complicated. Some hazardous gas DOES NOT HAVE A SMELL. Listen for changes in normal animal sounds (crickets, frogs, ground dwelling rodents) or behaviors. Spend as little time as possible in low-lying areas. Safe travels and happy returns!
ones that don't have a smell is IN RED STATESS with no regulations.
I would LOVE to hear if GE has ever been investigated for their kitchen ranges LEAKING NATURAL GAS, from the burners by accidentally being turned on by touching them.
I own a GE gas range and have complained to GE many times, about how easily these knobs can be turned on, and gas leak out, without even noticing them being on. I ended up having to buy a knob stop, from Amazon to stop them from being turned on, even when I was cleaning the stove after cooking. It is ridiculous at how easy these come on.
PLEASE, investigate GE Kitchen Ranges for their inept attitude of their ranges leaking Natural Gas, when barely touched.
Had the same problem. Used those child proof covers.
Dad was in construction. Never built for gas for just this reason. Why take such an awful risk?
I'm in a city of 1.4 million people in Canada and almost every dwelling and commercial building has natural gas piped in.
The metal, brass flexatalic hose connecting my gas stove to house hard piping developed a small leak from moving the stove out and back in over the years.
When the gas hit the pilot light, it wasn't pretty.
The fire dept came with sirens blaring.
this happened to me in the 1980's; the flexible tubing connecting to a stove cracked. Maybe there should be a program to replace these lines when stoves are replaced.
The newer homes are blowing up
The old h2o heater in our apartment was stored in its own utility closet & belched enormous amounts of nat gas every time it started up. The whole courtyard stank of gas. The PG&E guys would come out & say yeah, it's an old unit, & then walk away. So remember kids: if you smell gas, yeah, don't worry about it.
I worry about EV's blowing up in the parking lots.
Scam videos
Recently the youtube algo has been recommending videos of house inspectors doing some new home walk throughs, the quality is insanely bad, i mean the inspector even points out how a gas line was wired behind some sliding cabinets. Weird that no one really mentions new home construction, specially with all the videos out there, not to mention anyone creating a dataset out of these recent incidents would probably find a common factor really quick. Oh well, not like anyone is gonna do anything anyways, 34 trillion in debt and still counting. Housing is now a financial asset to park your cash if your wealthy.
I bought a house in 2017, all appliances were gas. I smelled rotten eggs once. In 2019 changed it all to electric and had the gas lines removed completely down to the end of the property. Couple years later bought solar and now I’m living energy free.
I have my own gas well that supplies everything in my house. The gas that is coming into my home only has less than one pound of pressure. BUT! Gas can be dangerous. The federal government can create a single rule that can stop these explosions. Every home who uses gas should have a gas detection and alarm system AND the system should turn off the gas when it is detected inside the home. I have a system that I created myself and it works VERY well. I test it every month. But still my nose is my best detector.
If you have your own gas well you don't have any mercaptan in the lines.
Sorry
Awww... I wernt muh goberment to prodect muh.
@@jimurrata6785I knew someone was going to call him on this.
There should be a database and investigation why it was happening from preventing it happening!
Housing CEOs are killing you in the long run.
DEPOSE
YES! And the government wastes all the money for infrastructure!
A house exploded near my house almost a year ago and the investigation found that the gas company made a mistake when they had been out earlier in the week. It's really scary.
Have they boosted natural gas pressure across the country by 50 times like they have in Maryland?
Explain?
Housing exploding across America is quite the dystopian headline
Switch over to electric heat pumps, geothermal heat pumps. Get rid of gas in homes!
OK, so tell me how that heat pump is going to cook my pasta that I had for dinner tonight. I'll wait.
@@spvillanoare you stupid? There have been electric cooking solutions for decades lmfao
Heat pumps are expensive and if using geothermal power they take up space outside the home. Plus most have expensive electric backup for extended cold weather.
@@spvillano You don't have to wait. The modern way - and safe from explosion way - to cook food is with an induction cooktop.
@@don2deliver A ground source heat pump (what you refer to as geothermal "power") is basically built around a large underground cavity that has air passing through it. Dig down deep enough and it will always be around 55° F inside that cavity, which is then adjusted in temperature, up or down, for the interior comfort of a home. It's a rather high end approach and, for sure, you're not going to find too many systems like that in apartment complexes, where a lot of these methane explosions occurred. You would also have to build (dig in the ground) one for each family unit.
Far more common today are air source heat pumps. There are ducted systems sized for single family homes, which look no different than a conventional air conditioning unit found outside, or on the roof, of many houses today . . . no underground excavation required.
Also, the mini-split systems you may have seen at the big box stores are an example of air source heat pump technology. They're easy to install (some manufacturers even offer them as DIY kits) and are very affordable to both purchase and operate. On some homes, depending on floor plans, it's now common to see two or more mini-splits replacing a single large air conditioner/furnace unit that used to be connected to duct work.
For those who insist on living where winters are miserable (I'm a recovering Pennsylvanian who relocated to Arizona 4 decades ago, so I don't look back that way with much envy,) there are resistance heating elements for the most frigid of conditions, when the air conditioner running in reverse when it's cold outside (that's essentially what an air source heat pump is doing,) isn't going to cut it. But there's also been a lot of work done in recent years to make heat pumps even more cold weather friendly, without having to depend on the energy-intensive resistance heating element backup.
I just bought a home that was built in the 50s. Ive had 4 leaks so far😅 get alarms, and have your homes tested inside and out with a meter. Its free to have the gas company come to your home for ANY PURPOSE
Thankfully 😅, my townhouse 🏡🌴 is all-electric ⚡️.
Im glad i live in an all electric apartment complex.
Our house has the best of both worlds. We have both gas and electric. I got permission to dig up our gas lines and replaced it with plastic lines, which was super easy to do and I learned most of it from RUclips and a lil help from my neighbor (we replaced his lines also).
We have our gas lines turned completely off when we aren't using it, and only use them during power outages. We even found a propane powered refrigerator and put it in our garage to swap food over from our main refrigerator to the propane refrigerator if the power outage lasts longer than 24 hours.
Whole project cost less than 500$. Not even 6 months later, we had a winter storm that knocked out power for 3 and a half days, and those new gas lines not only let us cook and have hot water, but also saved about 800$ worth of groceries from rotting.
I consider the costs have already paid for itself, and it's one less emergency to worry about every single time a hurricane or snow storm comes.
I lived in an all electric apartment complex. Higher resistance aluminum wiring from the 1960s, and people hooking up far too many appliances and entertainment devices to extension cords... three fires later...
I live in a house now.
@@WhoaBoI still will not call that the best of both worlds absolutely not
@@KarmenD-ce5re well, then, you're probably a short-sighted idiot. And you can have your fun addicted to the corporate grid in times of emergency.
Clueless on the dangers and pollution of electricity, eh.
23 deaths one year, 5 deaths the other, in a nation with over 330 Million people plus tens of millions of invaders. Yup those odds are intense ! .....
There have been a lot of house explosions the last year or so. I'm glad someone's finally talking about it.
How about a few statistics to put things in perspective? Average number of house fires per year: about 350,000 (down from over 700,000 in 1980). Average number caused by electric problems: some stats say 24,000; some 46,000. Average number caused by gas leaks: 4200. (Note, that's 1/6 to 1/10 the number caused by electricity.) Average gas explosions overall (not just homes) per year: 286. Feel a bit calmer? You should. It's way more dangerous to drive or ride in a car than live in a home with gas appliances, statistically.
This is terrifying!
Fracking causing quakes?
Angie, thank you for providing an excellent investigation to the gas explosion problem and offering a means for protecting yourself and your family against these kind of situations.
Send more money to Ukraine, ban gas, electricity and forks
So, in your world, the local or state governments shouldn't do anything, but the federal government should provide you with gas, electricity and forks?
Sounds like communism to me.
Another source of gas leaking happened in my neighborhood last week - a car ran off the road and into a building, severing the gas meter and releasing a cloud of gas that could be smelled for blocks.
Fortunately no fire resulted.
This is a genuine problem, but thankfully the smell of gas is pretty much unmistakable, so we have that warning at least.
It took months of complaints to get help here for a neighbor. Lines disturbed by developers. One man on the other side of our county did not make it. A leak happened again just days ago. New company purchased the old one from what I was told and no one seems to even know where the lines are but developing is rampant anyway. South Georgia.
Hard to believe there is enough gas concentration for such huge explosions and people still choosing to remain inside 🤔 it doesn't add up.
This story is to encourage ppl to go all electric.
How can you check an older home to see if it could have a gas leak issue?
You call the gas company and have them come and check inside and out. It's free.
Looks like the U.S. is starting to have their own Tofu-dreg moments. Granted most of this stuff actually lasted longer than those buildings in the east, but couldn’t y’all have… oh I don’t know… MAINTAINED THEM PROPERLY!?
Yep, it's happened in Westmoreland county, PA multiple times. Counting down my days. We need infrustructure. Neither party wants to fix the problem or hold companies accountable
Funny how the increase in illegal construction labor led to this
Funny your totally made up story that has nothing to do with reality and everything to do with your rabid racism
This is part of why in my opinion our country needs a maximum wage too. It would put more money in the companies pockets instead of 1 persons. The companies would have the fund to replace and repair with newer and better materials. As a retired plumber i know for a fact of some of these material improvements
Thank you.
The thiol ( mercaptan ) added to natural gas can be absorbed by the soil and thus provide no warning smell for a gas leak!
I wondered why people weren't smelling it!
Hmm houses built after 2000 … no wonder
So all the delivery fees and pipeline fees do nothing to prevent this. How muc $$ goes up in smoke
There have many such explosions on our pipelines & factories without explanation in recent years.
It's called bad/lazy plumbers and hvac people. Bottom line.
A couple was killed in October in Van Alstyne, TX due to a home explosion.
The house I rent was built in the 1920's. I only use my gas for hot water and cooking. I haven't figured out the heater yet, just put one of my dogs under the covers.
You both stay cozy, and dogs live longer if they can be with you.
With the climate changing & extreme weather events, perhaps you should consider getting another dog? Those 2 dog nights are coming 🙂
@@sharonyoxall7553 I have 2. The old big won't get under the covers. Luckily I live South of I-10, so our winters are not as bad as up North.
Back in the early 60's my Dad bought a house and it had a natural gas line to run the furnace. The DAY after he bought it he had that system and the pipe to the street taken OUT! He knew the serious danger that came with GAS.
Thank you Dad for keeping us safe growing up.
My Mom still lives in that same house today and she is 92. My Dad has passed on.
I still remember the explosion of Motel 6 in Bremerton on August 18th 2015.
0:56 we also had one here in Long Beach, CA about 2 months ago
In Boston city, they have reported gas leakages from the road pipes, you can see the bubbles bubbling out of puddling puddles.
Great reporting 👏👏👏
I like her reporting.
Also, the Harborton loophole protects. Fracking companies by allowing drillers to NOT DISCLOSE THE CHEMICALS THEY INSERT INTO THE GROUND AFTER FRACKING TO KEEP GROUND FROM COLLAPSING
This is exactly why I do not run gas into my home. Not to mention, it puts off a lot of moisture which can lead to mold.
Funny, don't get that much moisture from my gas stove burners, only needed to open a window to vent humidity once and that was with moderately high flames and four burners heating liquid filled pots I was cooking with.
Water heaters and home heaters vent the exhaust fumes through a chimney, so there would be no moisture from them.
And for the record, I'm in a studio apartment in a building that dates back to the mid-50's. Not a drop of mold.
Plenty of neighbors that could burn water though, as well as a few that have put things on the stove to cook, then went out, resulting in a visit from the fire department. Which would happen with any kind of stove, because we've yet to idiot proof stoves.
Personally, I'm not even fond of leaving a crockpot running when I go out...
You sound like they type who went "all electric" thinking its easier and you don't maintain any of that either 😅
@doublesunday1268 and you sound like someone that makes a lot of stupid assumptions. I use a wood stove. You know, the heat that involves the most work.
@@hope5443 you sound like the type who says stupid things, and then when other people read what you said you call them stupid 🙄 you said that this issue that is specifically caused by a lack of maintenance is the reason you don't use gas. You are a moron if you said that because you use wood instead. Fcking boomers.
Thank you for remind us about the risk of leak gas. Many of us still rely on it. Because not everyone is previleged to electrify anything
Where are the government inspectors when it comes to gas asleep on the job I guess
Spontaneous Home Explosion is such an interesting phenomenon.
I also have city gas as a backup but it cannot possibly get into my home without first going thru the regulator which lowers it to less than one pound pressure.
Low pressure does not mean low danger. In fact it may be worse, because the appliance may function quite well if the pipe is large, so the problem goes unnoticed.
Usually it gets into the home when there's a leak in a buried line. The gas then migrates through the soil through loosened or disturbed soil that exists along the route of the gas line, and it can travel that way for very long distances. And when gas migrates through the soil, the soil filters out the odor-causing additive, so by the time it leaks into your house there is no odor at all and you won't even know there's a problem. The risk of this happening is much less if the pipe goes above ground at the point where it enters your house than is the case if it enters through a basement wall, but since all concrete foundation walls have cracks which may not be sealed, there's still some risk, even then.
That's what the news is supposed to be, identify a public issue, talk to experts and witnesses and then offer an unbiased solution.
I wonder how many of these houses used gas appliances made in China and connected them to the internet...
Thank goodness we've switched to all electric in our household. Electric stove, electric dryer, electric heat pump... natural gas is just too damn risky in a post-truth deregulated country.
There's no excuse we don't have 96% efficient induction cooktops.
CALL BEFORE YOU DIG
When I buy home, it will NOT have any gas lines.
No way am I spending so much time, effort, and money, just to lose my home and belongings in an explosion. Or even worse, lose any of my family 😢
Can anyone smell it when there’s a gas leak?
Most people can.
Yes they should. Gas companies put an additive in the natural gas lines that has a distinctive odor like eggs rotting or something similar. They have a paper that you may can get from your gas company that have a scratch off off what leaking natural gas smells like.
Yes it smells like rotting eggs. It is distinctive and you can't miss the odor. They put an additive in natural gas so we can smell it and report any smells.
I know a few people who had covid and lost their sense of smell. I was happy mine came back a month after being sick, but some people never do get it back.
The smell of gas is very often not even present as a warning in these cases. Gas service lines are generally buried in a trench leading to the house. The same was commonly true of local branch lines, though more often in recent times those are installed by horizontal drilling. Trench backfill is normally looser than the surrounding soil, and even a line installed by horizontal drilling will have disturbed, looser soil right around the pipe. If the leak is from an underground line, the gas will move through that more-porous soil of the former trench or horizontal drilling and end up going straight to a house. Most soils are very effective at filtering out the additive that gives gas its characteristic odor, so when the gas moves through soil for any distance, the gas can end up being completely without a warning odor.
I lost a good friend yrs back to a natural gas explosion which occurred in the middle of the night. The cause was a supply line leak in their basement which killed him and sev members of his family.
sev members?? what is the word sev?
@KarmenD-ce5re several