By BJ Austin, KERA News
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/productio/mp3/kera/local-kera-906237.mp3
NOTE: This is an archived story from June 2010.
Dallas, TX – At least six people were injured and one is reported missing after a gas pipeline exploded Monday. KERA's BJ Austin says an electrical contractor doing some digging apparently cut the 36 inch, pressurized line along a rural county road in Johnson County, southwest of Fort Worth.
Bob Miller lives in Pecan Plantation, a couple of miles from the blast site.
Miller: It just shook the house for about three or four minutes. It was very loud. When I went and got in the car and went over that direction, you could see it was something to do with one of the gas plants over there because it was shooting flames way up. But it never threatened us: just a little bit of smoke, that's all.
Those flames shot high into the sky. The Mayor of Godley, David Willis says they could see them about ten miles away and hear the roar. He says it wasn't like anything that had happened before.
Willis: I don't think we've ever had a breach of a gas line like that, that caused that large of an explosion. You could hear the gas escaping from the line and burning off. It was a loud roaring sound in the distance.
Brady Stokes, assistant manager at the Pecan Plantation Food Store didn't know what was happening.
Stokes: All of a sudden what sounded like a rumble of thunder, it just kept going. I knew after a couple of second that it wasn't a rumble of thunder. And I thought if it's not thunder, could it be an earthquake because the windows were shaking. We have a little caf next door and their windows were shaking, too.
The Johnson County area around Cleburne has been the site of more than a dozen small earthquakes over the past year.
Pecan Plantation is across just across the line in Hood County. Bob Miller says officials there did a good job alerting residents about what was happening with an automated reverse 9-1-1 system.
Miller: I got calls on the home phone, and we both got them on our cell phones that there wasn't any danger in Pecan, and that no evacuation was necessary. So, Hood County did a really good job.
The Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates pipelines, will investigation the explosion.