Tactical Response to Explosive Gas Emergencies: Know Before You Go

By Jerry Knapp

Most fire departments in the United States respond to releases of two of the most common explosive gas emergencies, natural gas and propane. Case histories, near misses, and line-of-duty deaths (LODDs) from across the United States and Canada prove that all fire departments—big and small, career and volunteer—have huge firefighter training gaps in both the knowledge and skills necessary to respond to these common calls.

Several facts often result in the failure chain coming together at gas calls that results in firefighter injuries or LODDs. A classic example of this was the tragic death of Fire Department of New York Battalion Chief Michael Fahy on September 27, 2016, at a natural gas emergency.¹ Typically, the failure chain has the following links: our complacency (gas odor calls are annoying and usually nothing happens), our explosive gas response training may be incomplete (it is not part of any national curriculum), there are seven types of natural gas emergencies (you likely do not have procedures for each), our standard operating procedures (SOPs) may not provide practical and executable on-scene guidance, and our response procedures may not be based on gas industry best practices.

RELATED FIREFIGHTER TRAINING

• Tactical Procedures for Explosive Gas Alarms
• Tactical Size-Up for Explosive Gas Emergencies
• Natural Gas Emergency Strategy and Tactics
• Training for Natural Gas Emergencies
• Tactical Size-Up of Natural Gas Emergencies

This article will provide you with a few of the many critical strategic and tactical concepts required for safe and efficient response to releases of explosive gases such as natural gas and propane.

The West Haverstraw (NY) Fire Department was dispatched to an outside odor of gas at 1210 hours, January 16, 2012. On arrival on-scene at 1213 hours, we found a heavy odor of gas. A contractor using an underground boring tool hit and penetrated the plastic two-inch, 60-pounds-per-square-inch natural gas street main in a residential area of modular row houses. Uncontrolled gas migrated underground for nearly an hour before the accumulated gas ignited.

In a common fire department operation, Captain Kenny Patterson and I were checking nearby homes for migrating gas with a four-gas meter. The two gas company technicians had been on the scene for as long as the fire department, about 43 minutes prior to the explosion. We had not found any evidence of gas in any of the eight previous homes, not even an odor. I had our four-gas meter and a six-foot hook. The last home closest to the leak was locked.

At the locked building, the gas technician said he had a high reading of gas coming out from the inside of the house and needed us to force the door. We were waiting for a team with the forcible entry tools when the trapped gas inside the house exploded, completely shredding the house.

Instantly, it was not a routine gas leak. I saw something white fly over my head; it may have been the front door or the front wall of the house. The door landed across the street. I saw the house come apart. At times like this, your mind goes into hyperdrive. It is impossible to explain, but your mind is working super-fast and your vision is simultaneously, seemingly in super-slow motion.

The house exploded in a microsecond, but as I saw it happen in slow motion and instantly, I just knew it was going to be bad, really bad, deadly bad. It is amazing how fast your mind can watch and process an event like this. The bad news is that you are completely at the mercy of the incident. You are instantly aware of this, too.

My feet were now several feet off the ground; then, suddenly, I was on my hands and knees, staring down at the curb, wondering about a lot of things, primarily, how did I get here and was I dead? For all the mental power and memory of seeing it in slow motion, I did not know what happened. I was close to the house; then, I was at the curb.

I didn’t remember the flight, but I was burned, bleeding, and confused. It was deathly quiet. My head hurt. Was I dead? Bright red blood dripped from my head and pooled on the asphalt below me. My heart was still pumping—that was good. It seemed like an eternity, alone, more alone than you ever would be with smoke, dust, and blood as smothering, inescapable companions.

Emotions suddenly overran everything. Anger filled every void. Was it my destiny as a firefighter to die in this street among this trash (I was looking at a roll of toilet paper on the road in front of me)? Was I to die without even saying goodbye to my wife and son? But it was just a routine and annoying gas leak. What happened?

I did not know what was driving me to figure out what happened that day, to develop a practical SOP and an effective training program, until Fire Engineering Editor in Chief Bobby Halton wrote about post traumatic growth. Post traumatic growth is the positive side of experiences like this. As Halton explains, “It can drive you to new levels of understanding, research, and professionalism and to set and achieve new, lofty goals.” To this day, 10 years later, I am still learning new response techniques that I continue to use to improve the response procedures I am sharing.

Like other lucky firefighters who have survived a close call at a gas explosion, Patterson and I have survived our burns, broken bones, concussions, numerous injuries, and mental bruises, but it took a very long time with a lot of help from our friends and family and a fair amount of counseling.

Those times of spiritual reflection, punctuated by intense anger, emotional dives, and soaring spiritual experiences, drove me to use that long recovery time to learn why this incident went bad and what else we can do to better respond to natural gas leaks.

Dan Moran, the Rockland County (NY) fire coordinator for hazardous materials, a good friend, and a better listener, recognized the importance of my goal and became an active partner in our quest for excellence. He helped me to answer the question, “How could this happen?”

I had been in the fire service for 37 years; had seen my share of fires and emergencies; had served as a paramedic; and, as the chief of our county hazmat team, was a constant student of our game and a trainee in every fire and hazmat course I attended, which were many. I have a degree in fire protection, wrote a book on house fires, and have taught at FDIC International for the past 12 years and around our nation. I had the four-gas meter with me. Who would be safer than me at this call? How could this happen?

I Did Not Know What I Did Not Know

The answer is that I did not know what I did not know. This is exactly what one of America’s most veteran astronauts, John Young, said about the Challenger disaster, “It was one of those cases of not knowing what we did not know—and that is the most dangerous kind.”

Below are some of the most important things I did not know (and you probably don’t know, either) that nearly killed me. At first, I thought, this wasn’t my first gas leak; with all my training and experience, how could I miss these important points? But, as Moran and I waded through what I did and did not do on the scene and talked with experts around the nation, we realized that I was never trained to the level that was needed. You may not be either. The goal of this article is to fill part of that gap.

Critical Facts I Did Not Know

The fire department mission. Life safety, not find-and-fix, is our mission. We are in command of the scene and must be experts in explosive gas response. Our SOPs must provide clear guidance to protect the lives of both civilians and firefighters.

Gas detection. A metal oxide-based explosive gas detector will detect low levels of gas that your four-gas detector will not. It is blind to around 2% of the lower explosive limit (LEL). Always pair up an inexpensive metal oxide-based explosive gas detector with your four-gas monitor to increase your safety and effectiveness.

Rapid size-up. Handheld, laser-based natural gas detectors are a great tool to use during your size-up of gas odor calls. Most have a 100-foot range and simply need the laser to pass through the gas and reflect off a wall, the ground, a fence, or another surface. Laser-based gas detectors can penetrate most glass; therefore, they can tell you if there is gas inside a locked structure. These instruments can tell you how much gas is there—a little, a lot, or none—instantly and from a safe range. They are magnificent size-up tools.

Evacuation priorities. The fire department operation for evacuation moved from the outside of the kill box toward the leak. We should have started nearest the leak site and evacuated outward. This was not included in any training I attended, including that which was provided by the gas utility. Just like a search and rescue under fire conditions, get those in the most danger out first.

Underground gas migration. Gas was escaping from the broken main under the road surface back into the trench on the side of the road where the boring device was placed before it hit the gas main under the street. In the trench, I saw the soil was dancing (driven by pressurized escaping gas); my training taught me that the gas was lighter than air, so no problem. However, not all the gas was escaping up and being diluted in the air; some was migrating underground. Underground migrating gas will take the path of least resistance—in this case, into nearby buildings. The gas company never fully explained underground gas migration in their short slide shows. The statutory requirement for training firefighters on natural gas emergency response is vague, and the utility was training to the awareness level training. Fire departments operate at the technician and command level at natural gas emergencies, which is far beyond awareness training.