A natural gas leak and resulting explosion at a Chandler printing business that left four people injured Aug. 26 was attributed to a human reporting error and a prematurely degraded pipe, according to preliminary findings released Wednesday by Southwest Gas.
Investigators from multiple agencies, including the Chandler police and fire departments, ATF's National Response Team and crews from Southwest Gas found no sign of foul play in the explosion at Platinum Printing near Ray and Rural roads.
The cause was determined to be accidental, not criminal, according to an Aug. 31 Chandler police news release.
The type of natural gas pipe, a Driscopipe 8000 high density polyethylene pipe, used near the business was misidentified by the gas utility'sown personnel, according to Southwest Gas spokesperson Sean Corbett.
The misidentification exempted the pipe from remediation efforts made by the company to replace or abandon any pipe sections that were at risk, Corbett said. Southwest Gas is in the process of investigating how that error occurred.
In March of 2012, The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration with the U.S. Department of Transportation issued an advisory about the Driscopipe 8000 pipe and its potential for material degradation.
Specifically, the issue applied to gas pipes between one-half inch to two inches in diameter that were installed in desert-like environments in the southwestern U.S. between 1978 and 1999, according to the DOT website.
A preliminary...
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