YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio– A crew working in the basement of an Ohio building intentionally shut off a gas line without knowing it was under pressure before a deadly explosion this week, the National Transportation Safety Board said Friday.
NTSB board member Tom Chapman said the preliminary investigation shows workers were in the basement cleaning pipes and other outdated infrastructure and debris from the basement and vault area. fort — which extends under the sidewalk next to the building — in anticipation of a city project to fill the void. the area and replace the sidewalks. A crew of five and a supervisor were on site that day and four of the workers were present when the incident occurred, he said.
“It was an apparently abandoned service line that came off the main road and ran parallel to the street,” Chapman said.
He said workers didn’t smell any gas before they started cutting the pipe and knew there was a problem when they made the third cut.
At that point, workers pulled the fire alarm and alerted residents and bank employees to evacuate. Chapman said the explosion happened six minutes later. He also said that everything points to it being accidental.
Investigators will try to determine why the pipe was under pressure and for how long.
Chapman said the investigation will continue without access to the interior of the building until engineers can determine whether access to the building is safe. He said the NTSB obtained security video from inside the bank as well as other video evidence.
Tuesday afternoon’s explosion destroyed much of the ground floor of the Realty Tower, killing a bank employee and injuring several others. He collapsed part of the ground floor into his basement and sent the facade across the street. Bricks, glass and other debris littered the sidewalk outside the 13-story building, which housed a Chase Bank branch at street level and apartments on the upper floors.
Investigators are also trying to determine whether anyone in the bank heard the fire alarm.
Youngstown Mayor Jamael Tito Brown said in a news release Friday that the city has contracted with a construction company called GreenHeart to complete the private utility move into the basement of the Realty Tower. He said “there is no evidence” that the gas line shutoff mentioned by the NTSB was necessary to complete this work.
Greenheart did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday evening.
The bank employee, Akil Drake, 27, was seen inside the building just before the explosion, police said. Firefighters rescued other people as they evacuated the building.
Seven injured people were transported to a Youngstown hospital. A woman remained hospitalized Thursday in critical condition, but her name and other details about her injuries were not released. Three other people were in stable condition and the other three were released.
ABC News
