www2.newsadvance.com/lna/news/local/article/pipeline_rupture_drew_national_attention/19442/The fireball that sent a shockwave through Appomattox a year ago has reverberated throughout the pipeline industry, and made the town’s name a household word in other communities where pipelines run.
“The Appomattox explosion was one of the few that caught national attention,” said Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust. “Williams (Gas Company) runs pipelines all over the country and there are lots of new proposed pipelines.
“People started using Appomattox to ask, ‘What about our pipelines?’”
Williams operates three lines that run side by side and move natural gas from the Gulf of Mexico through Appomattox to New York. One of those three lines ruptured on Sept. 14, 2008, and the gas it released ignited into a fireball that leveled two homes and injured five people.
The company eventually settled damage claims with 130 property owners; that plus work on the lines totaled about $15 million.
News of the rupture spread quickly among other gas companies as well as in communities that have one thing in common with Appomattox — their proximity to a pipeline.
“It was certainly a wake-up call,” said Weimer, whose organization promotes fuel transportation safety through education and advocacy.
“Oregon and other places used the Appomattox rupture to say, ‘The federal government thinks (the gas company is) partially at fault. Why should we trust them?’ It caused Williams a lot of internal head-scratching.”
Larry Hjalmarson, vice president of operations at Williams, said he’s retold the story of the Appomattox explosion some 60 times across the country. He has shared the lessons learned both about the problems that led to the disaster and how pipeline employees and the community responded in an emergency.
“This industry is extremely safe,” he said. “A rupture is rare. A rupture that impacts people is really rare.”
The explosion caused Williams to reevaluate and reinforce underlying protections on its pipelines systemwide, said Jeffrey Wiese, associate administrator of pipeline safety for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
The rupture was caused by external corrosion that thinned the pipeline walls 50 to 75 percent. The metal couldn’t withstand the pressure of 800 pounds per square inch.
Williams was fined almost $1 million after investigators found possible failures to “address regulatory requirements for monitoring and preventing external corrosion,” according to an agency news release.
The company has stepped up its corrosion-control measures nationwide, Wiese said.
“If you look at the statistics … incidents with any consequence to people, injuries and fatalities, the trends are downward over the past 20 years,” Wiese said. “The threat to the public is going down at the same time the public is drawing more on it.
“The community can rest comfortably with the pipeline.”
News and data from the federal investigation into the pipeline failure proved useful to people fighting pipeline expansions in their communities, from Pennsylvania to Oregon.
People living along pipelines are taking their presence in their communities far more seriously since the explosion, Weimer said.
The same three pipelines that pulse natural gas through Appomattox run just more than 50 feet from Lynda Ferrell’s home in Pennsylvania, about 40 miles west of Philadelphia.
Two years before the explosion in Appomattox, Ferrell and some neighbors began to fight a proposal by Williams to expand part of one of the lines.
The rupture in Appomattox last September added fuel to their concerns.
“The citizens really started educating ourselves,” she said. “The Appomattox rupture happened while we were doing our self-education. The Appomattox line B is the same one that runs through Chester County, Pa. The citizens got a clear idea of what can happen if the worst happened.”
Chester County is a crossroads of sorts for five pipeline companies. Many of the property owners were aware of the easement, but had no idea what it meant for them, she said.
“A lot of these people had the pipe close to their houses — some within 20 feet to begin with,” she said. “I’ve talked to folks who knew about the easement and knew about the pipeline, and now, knowing what it’s all about, they are scared to live here.
“We were all wondering the same thing, ‘Do we have to sit back and watch it happen?’”
Ferrell and four other property owners battled Williams in court over seizing right-of-ways on their property through eminent domain. A federal judge would not grant the easement until Williams received state permits to cross two creeks and those were denied. The scope of the expansion was lessened and the watershed left alone.
“I was talking to my mother last week and she said, ‘Thank heaven it’s over for you,’” Ferrell said. “It’s not over. You get to a point where you know too much. Right now I know too much to feel comfortable living where I’m living. … I’m afraid of Appomattox and I’m afraid of eminent domain.”
Oregon State Rep. Chuck Riley tracked developments relating to the Appomattox rupture as he fought a bill that he said would “fast track” the approval process for liquefied natural gas terminals in that state.
Williams had proposed a 231-mile pipeline that would link one of its subsidiaries with a gas terminal. The project was one of three proposed in the state.
Riley opposed a house bill that he said would give too much power to corporations looking to seize private property by tying up property owners in lengthy court battles. The legislator had unsuccessful sponsored a bill that sought to tie any new pipeline projects to proven need in the state for more natural gas.
While the Appomattox explosion has drawn concern along other pipeline corridors, it also has drawn praise for how well emergency responders handled the crisis.
Bobby Wingfield, emergency services coordinator for Appomattox County, has been called to other states to discuss how seamlessly the various public safety officials came together during the disaster.
Virginia’s Department of Emergency Management is studying the community’s response, too.
“They did so many things right,” said Hjalmarson, the Williams executive. “It’s quite a thing to be proud of.”
County officials have made some changes in the aftermath. Most significantly, the county’s emergency communications center received an addition: Williams has funded a system to immediately notify utilities when they have an outage, Wingfield said.
During the rupture it was difficult to get messages to the utility companies — phone, electric, cable — that lost service, he said.
The program, installed just a few months ago, allows dispatchers to map the areas affected and automatically notify utility companies when there’s a major outage.
It’s a useful tool that Wingfield hopes won’t be needed.
