Bill Seurer Bill_AT_seurer.net wrote in message ...
Wade Lippman wrote:
In Rochester, NY, with winter months routinely experiencing long
periods of freezing temperatures, gas lines do not freeze up.

True, but houses do blow up there. 40 years ago a whole street blew up. I
don't remember what it was; a big surge in pressure or something like that.

Yeah, so? I bet you think that travel by car is safer than travel by
airplane because when cars crash only a few people (usually) are killed
yet when planes crash sometimes hundreds are killed.


Bill, back in the mid 90s England was building a bunch of flats
(apartments/condos) that were about 30 floors high 50 max. They were
based off of a type of construction technology that originated from a
northern part of Europe that DID NOT use natural gas. But the most
important thing is that they were so cheap to build and they went up
rapidly with the cranes because they were so simple in construction.

Big mistake. Even though it was a great idea to solve much of
England's housing shortage problems, all of these high rises were
flawed.

They were built like a house of cards because every section of wall
and floor all comes together like a puzzle, and gravity plays a big
role in keeping it all together. (Some of these buildings were spared
when they updated them with reinforces to hold the sections of walls
and floors together)

This works differently then what is common in north America where we
use big columns that are the main support for the building. The outer
shell would be to keep out the elements only and didn't support
themselves.

So The British went ahead and built all of these high rises and were
very exited about it because now they had cheap affordable housing for
many.

The big mistake is that they also installed gas lines and gas
appliances into these buildings. About a month after construction of
some of the first buildings all hell broke loose when one of the
residence left their stove running with no flame (told ya so). The
single apartment at the mid section of the building exploded. Because
the place was built like a house of cards there was a domino effect.
Not the whole building fell down on itself but 1/4 of it was missing
in the corner where the apartment had exploded. There was a bunch of
deaths and fatalities.

They made another wrong decision when they decided to simply shrug it
off as an accident as if it couldn't happen again. They couldn't be
more wrong.

Some time later it happened again (natural gas explosion), this time a
lot worse. And I can still see in my head a poor couple who lived to
tell about it when their apartment fell down from the rest of the
building. "My husband jumped on top of me and said I love you and
that the flat (apartment) was falling."

After that they started making some big changes.

Most of the new apartment buildings where torn down deemed as unsafe.
Only one or two of them that weren't built that tall were spared. All
they had to do was put in reinforces or fasteners that held each wall
and floor section together instead of just relying on gravity to do
the job. And of course in the end they ended up removing all gas
appliances and infrastructure and installed all electric's in it's
place.

This was a most unfortunate incident. Two incidents that didn't have
to happen. If it's comforting to anyone, at least we might learn from
these horrific experiences. The company that built the buildings went
belly under and is still in debt till this day.