Salem residents, gas firm shift focus to recovery after pipeline explosion

Randy Gillis pushed back the brim of his baseball cap and looked at charred hillsides that had produced crops and pastured cows on his family's Salem acreage since the 1930s.

“I don't think they'll be back in production in my lifetime,” the 49-year-old farmer said, surveying the field that was ground zero of a natural gas pipeline explosion Friday morning.

The blast rattled windows for miles, critically burned a man, melted siding on nearby homes and triggered a spike in the natural gas price in U.S. commodity markets.

“This is obviously a significant piece of the U.S. energy infrastructure,” Spectra Energy spokesman Phil West said Saturday afternoon. Employees of the Houston-based company, which operates the pipeline, were working to bleed pressure from three transmission lines buried on the same right of way as the ruptured line.

West said the three lines will be inspected for damage.

The region around the explosion site is a nexus for transmission lines that cross half the country, moving natural gas throughout the Northeast from fields as far away as Texas and as near as the Marcellus shale.

It's about a mile from one of the nation's largest underground natural gas storage facilities, where more than 120 billion cubic feet of gas can be stored deep underground in the sandstone strata that extends from near Delmont to Jeannette.

There were concerns about natural gas shortages after the disruption Friday, but West said customers have been able to obtain gas elsewhere.

Spectra's priorities are helping those affected by the blast — which had a radius of about a half-mile — and determining what triggered the rupture in the 30-inch line, West said.

It was installed in 1981 and last inspected in 2012. West said that inspection was done — as required every seven years — with a device that travels through the lines. The check showed no problems. He said other reviews are conducted between such inspections.

“There are claims adjusters on the ground (Saturday) meeting with homeowners who were affected. Our interest is to take care of any of those who were affected.

“We don't have any indication of the cause, and that's why the (U.S.) Department of Transportation (which oversees interstate pipeline traffic) is here with us,” West said.

Burn victim remains critical

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the individual who was injured and his family,” West said, a reference to James Baker, 26, who was listed in critical condition in UPMC Mercy's burn unit.

The explosion seared about 40 acres of the 150-acre cattle farm where Gillis, his wife, Wendy, and their three children live. It destroyed a brick ranch-style house along Route 819 that the Gillises have rented to the Bakers for several years.

Kellie Baker left for work before the explosion. Her husband was at home recuperating from surgery on a broken ankle when the explosion shot flames 300 feet into the air.

Wendy Gillis said neighbors have rallied around the family, asking what they can do for the Bakers.

“A neighbor brought down $200 this morning for James and Kellie, and a lady at the bank ... handed me $100 this morning,” she said.

Friends and family have set up a GoFundMe page.

James Baker's mother, Helen Baker of Delmont, said the couple lost everything in the blast and her son faces a long, painful recovery.

“He is such a kind, tender boy,” she said. “Everybody has been wonderful. People from Pittsburgh to Florida have reached out to us.”

The blast, which Helen Baker said left her son with third-degree burns on half of his body, seared away topsoil, leaving a red blanket of clay around the Bakers' home. It destroyed two fields of hay, three fields of barley and two fields where Gillis planned to plant corn this month.

“I'll be buying hay and food this summer and winter,” he said.

Had the explosion occurred a week later, it would have claimed his 75-head herd of Black Angus cattle, Gillis said. The cows were in their winter pasture near Gillis' farmhouse Friday morning.

‘There's nothing left'

Gillis said he was in the barn cleaning out cattle pens when the line exploded several hundred yards away.

“I grabbed the dogs, got in the truck and took off,” Gillis said.

His wife, a special education teacher, was at work at West Point Elementary School in Hempfield when she got her husband's chilling phone call.

“He ... said, ‘When you come home, there's not going to be anything left of this place,' ” Wendy Baker recalled.

The topography acted as a fire break, sparing the family's barns, outbuildings and farmhouse, as well as their cattle.

Randy Gillis said state Rep. Eric Nelson has stopped to see him several times and local fire departments guarded the blast site in four-hour shifts through Friday night. They remained there Saturday afternoon with Spectra security guards and inspectors and Transportation Department staffers.

“We're still at the same point we were at yesterday,” said Robert Rosatti, chief of the Forbes Road Volunteer Fire Department. “We still have some gas in the lines and it will take a while to bleed it off. Our biggest concern, as with Spectra Energy, is public safety.”

Debra Erdley is a Tribune-Review staff writer. She can be reached at 412-320-7996.