Robert Rosatti turned the bend in his truck Friday morning and couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“When I came around the corner it was like I was looking into hell,” the Forbes Road Fire Department chief related Saturday, a day after a fiery natural gas pipeline explosion shook Salem Township in Westmoreland County, severely burning one man and damaging a handful of houses.
“The whole way across my windshield I could see nothing but fire.”
In the minutes after the explosion, the heat was so intense that Mr. Rossati, one of the first to arrive at the scene, couldn’t get out of his truck. He stayed inside for 20 minutes until the wind shifted, providing some relief.
The heat damaged the front grill of his truck even though it was parked nearly half a mile from the explosion and melted the siding of a nearby house on Route 819. Firefighters from the volunteer department, fearing that the home was going to ignite, quickly positioned a hose to douse it with water until the danger passed.
Mr. Rosatti was back at the scene Saturday. The immediate danger from the explosion of the large Texas Eastern transmission line had passed but lingering concerns remained about the gas still being siphoned from it and three other pipes in the vicinity.
While gas to all four lines was shut off after the explosion, officials spent Saturday bleeding out any that remained in the pipes. They said they hoped to have it all out by today.
“We want to do this as safely as possible,” Mr. Rosatti said at a briefing. “It’s going to take a while to draw the gas down. Our biggest concern is obviously for public safety.”
Once the gas has been removed, officials can begin inspecting the large line — 30 inches in diameter — that exploded and three others that a company official said were “tens of feet apart.”
Leading the investigation into the cause of the explosion is the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which had representatives in Salem Saturday.
Phil West, director of communications for Spectra Energy, the Houston-based parent company of Texas Eastern, said the company hasn’t been able to determine whether any of the other lines have been compromised.
Nor does it know yet what triggered the blast. In addition to finding a cause, Spectra’s focus right now, Mr. West said, is on the man who was severely burned in the explosion and the residents whose houses were impacted by it.
Five homes were damaged and one was destroyed, Mr. Rosatti said. The latter was owned by the man burned in the explosion. He was able to extricate himself from the rubble and was found running along Route 819 by emergency responders, the fire chief said.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the individual and his family and we are deeply sorry,” Mr. West said.
The man, whose name was not released, was taken to UPMC Mercy Hospital with burns over much of his body. His condition was not available Saturday.
Spectra has sent a community assistance team in Salem to help homeowners and others affected by the calamity, Mr. West said. “The hope is to take care of any of those issues and claims as expeditiously as possible,” he said.
In the incident’s aftermath, a community hotline number — 855-210-7732 — also has been set up for those who need help.
Mr. West acknowledged that the affected pipe and the three others that were shut down represent a “significant piece of U.S. energy infrastructure,” particularly to the eastern part of the country.
Customers were able to find other sources of supply Friday, Mr. West said, but he declined to speculate about what the future may hold.
The line that exploded was installed in 1981 and last inspected by an in-line tool in 2012. There was “nothing requiring remediation or repair” found at the time, he said.
This is the second time in a year there has been an incident involving a Texas Eastern pipeline operated by Spectra. The company also operated a 24-inch pipeline that ruptured last spring in Arkansas, closing two miles of the Arkansas River and damaging a towboat, according to the Arkansas Times. No gas was flowing through the auxiliary pipeline, which runs under the river, at the time, though there was gas in it.
Mr. West said the rupture was caused by strong river currents following a significant rainfall. He said there does not appear to be any correlation between that incident and what happened in Westmoreland County.
“We do not know the cause of the incident here but obviously it is a different set of conditions,” he said.
In Salem Township, meanwhile, the fire department is keeping the section of Route 819 in the vicinity of the blast closed until at least Monday as a precaution, Mr. Rosatti said.
A day after the blast occurred, the fire chief still was stunned by its enormity. It melted a road, damaged fields and trees, and created a fireball that Mr. Rosatti will never forget.
“It looked like the sunrise,” he said, “but the sun doesn’t rise in the north.”
Staff writer Jill Daly contributed to this story. Mark Belko: mbelko@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1262.
First Published: April 30, 2016, 7:04 p.m.