[Closed] Heysham gas explosion

I heard that on the radio earlier. Unbelievable

Very sad poor little one. Hope they get the maximum sentence, incredibly selfish as you can’t not know your cutting a gas pipe.

Having cut throw the gas pipe when removing a fireplace, you know about it alright.

There's obviously a story for the Police to uncover here. Let's hope the local Spotted Vigilante group don't get involved.

incredibly selfish as you can’t not know your cutting a gas pipe.

What selfish motivation can someone possibly have for knowingly cutting a gas pipe?

What selfish motivation can someone possibly have for knowingly cutting a gas pipe?

Its not the first time.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/feb/19/jailed-gas-blast-toddler-partingto-oldham

Bypassing the meter, home-brew gas fire installation or deliberate attempt to blow the place up?

Either way it is tragic.

Jeez! That must have been quite a bang.

Many years ago I was at a friends flat which which we'd just moved him in to. He thought he could smell gas so called  British Gas at the time who came out to check. The engineer gave it a really good check over, Andy had told him he'd bought it as a repossession so didn't know how long it had been empty. The reason the guy was so thorough was that he'd been to another repossession the week before to discover someone had gone to the trouble of lifting a floor board to drill pin holes along the gas pipe and then put the floorboard back. They'd quite deliberately attempted to rig the place to explode when a new owner came in.

Drilled into a gas pipe once, and the slight hiss of gas and the smell is enough to tell you switch off gas and phone a gas safe plumber straight away as well as open all windows and doors , just incase, cutting through a pipe may have easily been done replacing a floor board with the gas off, but then turning the gas on youd soon smell gas and its time to get out, quick and phone for help, whoever did it accidentally or for whatever purpose has to live with that forever,and its not going to be an easy life.

I think the couple who remain in hospital were the occupants of the house with the cut gas pipes. They are in a critical condition with severe burns.

Plumbing question, but do meters not have slam shut valves? And if not why not?

Plumbing question, but do meters not have slam shut valves? And if not why not?

Well, I can sort of answer that. We just fitted them on the methane lines at work for exactly this reason, it's a small plug that engages when the flow gets above a certain level, you can't really get much simpler.

And they're utter crap. They need a load of faffing to set up in order to trip at the correct flow rate and even then they are prone to just randomly throttling for no reason. Imagine the chaos that would ensue if everyone had one. Well, actually, there wouldn't be chaos as they would just run them on their bypass line and defeat the whole point of them.