811

I hesitate to use this word, but I find this underground explosion that injured 2 PPL workers and a responding Wilkes-Barre police officer intriguing.

The link: Probe of underground W-B blast goes on

I find it intriguing because in my chosen profession, while it may fade into the background more often than it should, the safety component of the job never does go away.

Those PPL guys who were injured had probably lowered themselves into underground vaults a thousand times. They probably were doing what they had done correctly a hundred times over. Yet, something went horribly wrong on that job.

I imagine that, for most people, safety is something they never have to think about once they arrive at work for another mundane day. Integrity and honesty and professionalism and experience are all important, but not many people who get paid to sit in a cubicle have to keep the safety aspect of things tucked neatly into their minds all day long.

Recently, at a regional training meeting, we were treated to pictures of another job gone horribly wrong.

Somebody went and augered through a high-pressure natural gas line. And the resulting explosion destroyed numerous homes, garages, barns and ancillary buildings, and the blast radius was something like a quarter mile by a half mile. Burned black, it was. A state route was shut down as was a major highway. And not a single trace of that somebody was ever found.

With that said, some years ago I had spun a gas-powered auger right through a natural gas line that was connected to a private residence. Right after the soil stopped smacking me in the face, the smell hit me. Not to be overly dramatic or anything, but this newly augered hole in the ground was in very close proximity to a well-traveled thoroughfare. So if one passing motorist had flipped a lit cigarette out of a vehicle…a major explosion would have quickly followed.

Before the home owner ran up the street, she called 911. And then the parade started. The fire department rolled on up. And a technician from the local gas company was on scene within 8 minutes, excavated the ruptured line and tamped out the leak. Then an entire crew of gas company workers arrived. Then a supervisor of theirs got there. Then one of my nervous supervisors. And then another of my nervous supervisors.

In my defense, the gas line was less than ten inches from the surface of the soil. And natural gas lines are not supposed to be sitting so shallow. As a result, the utility did not try to hold my company accountable for this most unwanted of events.

But it’s good example of why you should never take anything for granted, why you should never eschew safety because of your vast level of experience, and why you should call Pennsylvania One Call before you disrupt any amount of soil, even 10 inches worth.

And it needs to be noted that they guy who was vaporized in the high-pressure gas line incident was the property owner, and he simply sought to auger some holes for a new fence he planned to erect. But he failed to have the utilities identify the location of the subterranean and sub-slab utility lines, and it cost him his life.

So, if you’ve dropped a bundle on some building materials from Home Depot, and plan to press on with any do-it-yourself projects that involve any soil disruptions at all, do the smart thing, do the safe thing, and have the utilities mark the lines beforehand.

Or as they used to put it in their radio ads on WILK, before you bore, auger, drill or dig, call 811. Do it.

That’s all I got.

Later