A major gas explosion has affected three homes in the Reisterstown Station neighborhood in Northwest Baltimore. The explosion killed one woman and severally injured four other residents.
Gas explosion
This happened at around 10 am at Reisterstown and Labyrinth Road, which is behind Reisterstown Road Plaza shopping center. The cause of the explosion was not clear at first, rescue crews pulled a woman from the rubble just before noon and they freed another man around 12:15 pm, according to the Baltimore Sun.
Fire officials said that rescuers are now searching the debris for other survivors. The officials did not provide the ages and names of those who were rescued, but witnesses said that they heard children crying for help after the explosion.
More than 200 rescue personnel were on the scene, and Mayor Bernard C. Jack Young, police commissioner Michael Harrison, and City Council President Brandon Scott warned the public to stay away from the area because the gas leak is still active.
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Richard Yost, the spokesperson for Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. said that the company received a call from the fire department before 10 am asking crews to respond to the scene.
Yost said that the crews are working to turn off gas to the buildings in the immediate area. Once the gas is cleared, they will assess the situation including inspections of the BGE equipment.
According to Kevin Matthews, an Occupational Safety and Health Administration building inspector, when he arrived at the scene he saw one person buried from the neck down, and another was sheltering in a closet. He also heard children shouting and crying for help.
Some area residents said they felt the blast several miles away. Neighbors also reported having their windows blown out and their doors blasted off the hinges.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said in a tweet that he is closely monitoring the situation and they have reached out to offer their full support to the ongoing response and recovery efforts.
Repairing the gas lines
Many gas lines in the Baltimore area are in need of repair. The Sun reported last year that the project could take BGE at least two decades to complete.
BGE is America's oldest gas utility with origins dating back to 1817. The company will need to replace at least thousands of miles of obsolete pipes.
Gas leaks are very frequent that almost two dozen of them are discovered every day, according to the data that the Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. presented to the federal authorities.
The number of leaks increased by 75% from 2009 to 2016 despite what the officials called a dramatic increase in the failure of pipe joints dating from the 1950s and the 1960s.
Property records also suggest that the two-story, 1,000-square-foot rowhomes in the neighborhood affected by the blast date to around 1960.
Almost 680,000 Baltimore-area residents and businesses use natural gas to heat homes, buildings, and water or to cook on stovetops and the number of residents and businesses has grown 3.% over the past five years.
