Opinion: Explosions may be more preventable than we think

Talk about it

Shouldn’t we be doing more to prevent house explosions?

In just the past three years, there have been four house explosions in our little part of South Dakota. One caused a death, two left their single occupants badly injured, and one occurred when nobody was home. Three were caused by natural gas leaks, and one was caused by a propane leak.

That’s four explosions in three years, all contained in just three counties in one state. The problem is worse in places such as California, where a September gas explosion killed eight people, injured dozens more and destroyed 35 homes.

Shouldn’t we be more outraged by this?

Perhaps we’ve accepted the notion that accidents happen. As long as we heat our houses with explosive gas, we figure there will be accidents.

There’s some truth in that, but as someone who relies on gas to fuel my furnace, I’m not willing to resign myself to the possibility that my home could explode at any moment.

Providers of natural gas and propane assure us that their product can be used safely, in part because of the addition of a substance called “mercaptan” that they say makes gas smell like rotten eggs. If you smell rotten eggs, they say, get out and get help.

If it’s really that simple, why do houses keep blowing up?

Maybe it’s because it’s not that simple. I for one am not sure if I know exactly what rotten eggs smell like. I don’t make a habit, after all, of letting eggs rot so I can familiarize myself with their odor. I have smelled the scratchand-sniff tab that utilities sometimes send to their customers, but the scent is not exactly burned into my memory.

Even if I were confident in my ability to detect a rotten-egg odor, there’s this to worry about: A Google search for “mercaptan” turns up the chemical’s Wikipedia entry, which says mercaptan smells like “rotten cabbage.” And I found this on the website of a propane provider: “Propane has a strong, unpleasant smell like rotten eggs, a skunk’s spray, or a dead animal.” It would be nice if utilities could get their stories straight, so we’d know exactly what to sniff for.

Additionally, I wonder about this: If we smell what we think might be rotten eggs or rotten cabbage or a skunk’s spray or a dead animal, how do we know we’re not smelling one of those actual things, or any of the innumerable other smells that a house can be afflicted with? Basements are musty. Sewer traps dry up. Sewer vents get plugged. Garbage rots. If we wish to avoid perishing in a house explosion, must our noses be finely tuned instruments?

And what if we have a stuffy nose, like Jose Aguirre said he had in August? The 38-yearold Mitchell man said he could not smell the natural gas leak in his house and, when he attempted to cook something, the activity was enough to spark an explosion.

“The next thing you know, I’m outside,” Aguirre told The Daily Republic last week in his first interview since the accident. He was lucky enough to survive, but he suffered severe burns.

I’m guessing we could have a better detection system if we demanded it. My thoughts on this are guided somewhat by the new water meters being installed throughout Mitchell. These new water meters can transmit data to a computer, and if there is an unusual spike in water usage somewhere, an alert can be sent to the property owner.

If we have that kind of a system for water, which is a relatively harmless substance, why don’t we have a similar system for propane and natural gas? Why are there not devices in our homes that can sense natural gas or propane in the air? If we had such devices, could they sound an alarm? Could they transmit an alarm to a computer, which could shut off the gas remotely? Would that prevent all, or at least some, explosions?

We at The Daily Republic put those questions to utility officials for a September news story. They said such technology is cost-prohibitive, and it probably would not prevent all explosions.

That may be so, but couldn’t we be doing more than sniffing the air and waiting for the next house to explode?

Tags: seth tupper, house explosion, natural gas, opinion, columns, propane