When should you evacuate for a gas leak? Fatal Missouri explosion raises questions

Yahoo

19-04-2025

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More than a week after a gas explosion killed a 5-year-old boy in Lexington, Missouri, no one is saying who was responsible for the decision not to evacuate homes near the source of the leak.
Not police, fire or city leaders, who all say they've been silenced, requested by the National Transportation Safety Board to pass on communication responsibilities to the federal agency as it investigates. And not Liberty Utilities, whose gas line a worker subcontracted by Sellenriek Construction damaged while excavating to lay fiber optic cable. They, too, refer questions to NTSB.
In the 3 ½ hours before the explosion, as utility crews worked to repair the line, residents smelled gas and worried whether they were safe. But for hours, they said, first responders assured them they were.
Until they weren't.
Alistair Lamb's body was found in the rubble hours after his father, Jacob Cunningham, and his 10-year-old sister, Camillia 'Cami' Lamb, were airlifted on the night of April 9 to Kansas City hospitals with severe injuries after their home was leveled and several others were damaged in the explosion.
With no answers in Lexington as to why residents weren't told to leave, The Star spoke with fire departments in pockets of the state, and examined two other gas explosions across Missouri in recent years and how they were handled once leaks were reported.
At one, three years ago in O'Fallon, Missouri, firefighters and utility crews evacuated homes around a gas leak about an hour before one home exploded.
Andy Parrish, an assistant chief with the O'Fallon Fire Protection District, said each department has its own protocol and standards on how it handles gas leak situations. And each scene can be different, he said, depending on where the leak is and how much gas is emitted into the air and inside buildings and homes.
But there is one rule that often comes into play during an incident of a leak, he said.
'If we smell the gas, we're going to monitor and we're going to ask you to leave,' Parrish said. In that 2022 call, six or seven homes were evacuated early on after crews went door to door and found gas levels inside two residences that were 'sufficient enough to evacuate these folks.'
'It's a good thing they did,' Parrish said.
Several Lexington residents whose homes were damaged in the blast said first responders did not go door to door, and they weren't aware of any testing done. In fact, they said, they weren't alerted to any possible danger — until after the home where Cunningham and his children lived exploded.
Keith Hollway, NTSB spokesman, said any questions about which agency was in charge, why homes weren't evacuated and what took place from around 4:15 when the line was damaged to 7:45 p.m. when the explosion occurred are part of the ongoing investigation.
'NTSB is continuing to collect records, policies, and procedures of those entities involved,' Holloway said in an email. 'NTSB will review any audio, video, photos, etc., that may be available.
'Part of the NTSB investigation will be to review the chronology of events leading up to the explosion. This is an ongoing process of the investigation.'
In Kansas City, when a gas leak is reported, the Kansas City Fire Department works in collaboration with the local gas company, Evergy.
Fire department spokesman, Battalion Chief Michael Hopkins said that, over the last 10 years, the department has been dispatched to approximately 3,700 calls each year for reported gas leaks, both inside and out.
The department, he said, uses a four-gas meter to test for the level of natural gas in the air. A meter is a hand-held device that tests the concentrations of oxygen, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide (sewer gas) and combustible gases, such as natural gas.
'Anytime there's a leak, we're going to check,' Hopkins said, 'even if it's an outside leak. Say a contractor hits a main or feeder line. We're going to check all the surrounding structures using our four-gas meter to see if we're getting any build-up in the basement or within the structure itself.'
If, for example, a contractor damages an outside gas line while installing a sprinkler system, the fact that the gas line is outside makes no difference, Hopkins said.
'We would check your house as well as the surrounding houses within a few houses in either direction or across the street, just to make sure that we're not getting any build-up in the basements or throughout the structures,' Hopkins said. 'Because once the natural gas is being released into the ground, into the soil, it can actually travel through the cracks and crevices, and depending on the type of foundation you have, it can find its way into the structure.'
Hopkins said fire department personnel also monitor the outside air and wind direction, knowing that homes downwind are likely to smell the gas and call the fire department with concerns.
'We don't discount that,' he said. 'We'll send someone down to check with a monitor just to make sure.'
Firefighters, he said, also roll out fire hoses as a precaution at the site of a gas line break.
Regarding evacuation, 'the department, per se, does not have the authority to force someone to evacuate, We can't just say, 'Get out of your house, because we said so,'' Hopkins said
'Anything we do on an evacuation standpoint, initially, is us going up and saying, 'There's a gas leak and we're getting high levels. We recommend that you evacuate this structure.' That decision would come from either us, or in collaboration with the gas company, once they arrive on the scene.'
Phil Oakes, the chief of operations and training for the National Association of State Fire Marshals, emphasized that guidelines or standard operating procedures for handling gas leaks tend to be developed by each department. As such, they can differ from municipality to municipality
But there are commonalities.
'One of the first things that everybody always tells you, if you smell gas in your house is, obviously, to get out of the house,' Oakes said. 'What most people don't realize about natural gas, and it's something we teach in our curriculum, is that natural gas underground flows a lot like water.
'It follows the path of least resistance. It will follow sewer lines. It will follow conduit. It will follow cable and loose soil to get where it needs to go. If it comes up and hits asphalt, it will go laterally instead of vertically. If it's blocked, it will move side-to-side, which is why you could have a leak in the street and get gas in the homes on either side.'
If an individual smells gas in their home, even if the leak is from outside, the response ought to be the same, he said.
'Get out. Get to an area where you no longer smell gas,' Oakes said. 'Don't even touch a light switch. Don't open the garage door. Don't start your car or anything that might be an ignition source.'
Oakes again stressed that local responses can vary, but 'typically, and this is typical,' if a line is damaged outside of a house, a fire department is 'not just going to check the outside, because the gas moves laterally to either side of the street, or could flow in any direction.'
'They should be knocking on doors and checking and saying, 'Look, we just want to make sure it's not in your house — using their air monitoring devices,' Oakes said. 'That's what the average response from a fire department would be. That's why it takes a whole lot of air monitoring to do it, because you've got a whole lot of houses to check in a city block. ... They've got to. That's the only way you can determine where the gas is.'
Three years ago, fire and utility crews in O'Fallon learned how critical evacuating homes after a gas leak can be.
On March 1, 2022, a contractor struck a gas line in a residential area and called the utility company and the fire department, according to media reports. When fire and ultility crews arrived on scene, they walked door to door talking with residents who were home and testing gas levels.
'And so at that point, they kind of investigated and found whatever levels they found that were sufficient enough to evacuate these folks,' Parrish said. Seven homes were evacuated.
Firefighters on the scene stayed to monitor the situation.
'We were parked on that corner,' Parrish said. 'Out of the way from anything that could happen.
'That's when it happened. That's when it blew.'
About an hour after crews had arrived, one of the homes — where someone was before the evacuation — exploded. Parrish said the explosion 'caught our people by surprise.'
Residents, too. Media reports from three years ago said no one was hurt in the explosion, but one home was leveled and four others severely damaged. Other homes were also damaged.
That call demonstrates, Parrish said, why fire departments and utility companies are cautious when working a gas leak.
'Just because you have a gas in the house doesn't mean that it's going to ignite,' he said. It has to be the right fuel and air mixture.
' … But if it's a strong smell, that's enough for us. If there's any smell at all, why not be safe and just get out?'
Fire officials say they listen to residents at the scene of a gas leak in order to ensure safety. That becomes hard to do when no one is home.
Last August, a construction crew running a fiber optic line in Independence struck a gas line. They immediately called for a fire crew, said Battalion Chief Eric Michel, a spokesman for the Independence Fire Department.
From there, the department used standard procedures it had in place and sent one truck to assess the situation. Once there, Michel said they discovered an active leak and called dispatch to request the gas company respond.
'They brought the equipment that they needed to dig down and make the repair,' he said. And because no one was home at a nearby residence to smell and report the odor of gas, crews didn't know that it had made its way inside the home, Michel said.
Until it was too late.
'As the crew was repairing the line, the explosion happened,' Michel said. 'We thought (the gas leak) was isolated outside, so we didn't realize it had gotten into the residence until the explosion occurred.'
No one was hurt.
Once crews discovered the leaking gas had 'found its way into the sewer line,' Michel said, employees with the utility went door to door testing for levels in each home. Ultimately, they found two homes that 'had dangerous levels of natural gas in them.'
That prompted an evacuation of one block in each direction.
'This was kind of a strange situation,' Michel said. 'If it had happened like, say, at a mall, and people inside the mall started smelling gas, that's a different story. We would have been able to address it.'
And if someone had been inside the home where the gas initially seeped inside, they would have reported it and crews could have worked to repair the problem sooner.
'If somebody had been home to tell us about it,' Michel said, 'the explosion would never have occurred.'