Ky. pipeline explosion leaves 1 dead
A JUNCTION CITY, KY. — regional gas pipeline ruptured early Thursday in Kentucky, causing a massive explosion that killed one person, hospitalized five others, destroyed railroad tracks and forced the evacuation of a nearby mobile home park, authorities said.
Some homes were consumed by the blaze when firefighters extinguished the flames hours later, Lincoln County Emergency Management Director Don Gilliam said.
“The part of the area that has been compromised, there’s just nothing left,” Gilliam said when asked whether residents might return to their trailer homes. “The residences that are still standing or damaged will be accessible. There doesn’t really look like there’s any in-between back there. They’re either destroyed or they’re still standing.”
Kentucky State Police spokesman Robert Purdy said at least five homes were destroyed and structures within 500 yards had damage. He said a handful of people who were missing after the blast have now been accounted for.
The 30-inch wide pipeline moves natural gas under such high pressure that the flames reached about 300 feet in the air and could be seen throughout the county, he said.
The explosion around 1 a.m. was so huge that it showed up on radar, according to a tweet from WKYT-TV meteorologist Chris Bailey. It took hours for firefighters to douse the flames, with trucks repeatedly refilling their tanks and returning to the scene.
Purdy said the fire burned so hot that it left the landscape barren, burning trees and grass and leaving only red dirt, rocks and gravel.
Nearby residents said they were awakened by the initial blast.
Naomi Hayes told The Associated Press that she lives within a mile of the scene and felt her home shake, then saw light outside the window.
“It was so bright that it was like daylight outside, just with an orange tint,” she said.
“When we went out the door, we could see the flames. They were so high and so bright ... and the noise was insane,” she said about the burning fire. “It was a roar, like a monster roar. We had to yell to talk to each other. That’s how deafening it was.”
Another nearby resident, Sue Routin, told WLEX-TV that the blast shook her home too.
“It woke us up and it was just a big roar and it was fire going up into the sky as far as you could see,” she said. “Our windows were shaking really bad, and our doors and the ground, you could hear the ground just moving and tumbling and rolling. And then we got to feeling the heat from the fire, so we got in our vehicle and took off to get away from it.”