Mark Lloyd wrote:

On Fri, 10 Sep 2010 19:48:35 -0500, Pete C. wrote:

DGDevin wrote:

"Pete C." wrote in message
ster.com...

- People laugh at me when I say Nat. Gas is *not* safe and should not
be allowed in residential areas,

With good reason. I've lived in areas with natural gas heat for over
half a century and seen damn few accidents, and many of those were
caused by morons who didn't heed the Call Before You Dig warnings or
who couldn't be trusted to light a water heater according to the simple
instructions stuck to the side.

yet nearly every day there is a house explosion due to a nat. gas
leak,

Documentation please.

Just do some searching on your favorite news site (CNN.com, local TV
station sites, newspapers, etc.) for "explosion" and then filter out the
few explosions that were not due to nat. gas. Don't search on "gas
explosion" since often the story title is "house explosion" "business
explosion" or the like and you have to read the story to find that it
was a gas leak that caused it. You will find thousands of reports from
across the country. Many are without fatalities due to folks at work,
got out in time, etc., but plenty of fatalities as well, and of course
the less frequent big ones like the CA explosion or one I recall in the
northeast that leveled and apartment building.

I live close to New London, Texas where the school had a big gas
explosion in 1937. The school had free gas from the oilfield. Someone
told me they installed the wrong regulator (made for lower inlet
pressure) and it failed open. There were a lot of fatalities from that.

Supposedly, that explosion is why they started adding something smelly to
gas.

Yep, many many fatalities due to dangerous nat. gas use over the years.
Swept under the rug by the nat. gas monopolies of course.

Per the NFPA documents I posted the link to, 2000-2004 averaged 2,410
home structure fires due to nat. gas per year. That works out to an
average of 6.6 such nat. gas caused fires each and every *day*. If you
include the 1,390 LP gas residential fires per year, that makes 10.41
residential fires caused by unsafe gaseous fuel use every day.

Yes, 3,800 incidents and the resulting 66 fatalities and 404 injuries
per year are much lower than auto fatalities and injuries, however these
fatalities and injuries could be prevented by eliminating the unsafe
gaseous fuel use, or at least substantially reduced by mandating the
inexpensive gas detectors in every home using gaseous fuels, just like
CO detectors are mandated.