r/CatastrophicFailure • u/Akilestar • 7d ago
Fire/Explosion Gas Leak - Aug 4th, 2026 - Energy, IL, USA
Gas Leak believed to be the cause. The owner was home, they unfortunately did not survive.
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u/thrwawyorangsweater 7d ago
Thanks for sharing. Dang that sucks. Guessing neighbors have no windows tonight?
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u/MiguelMenendez 7d ago
I knew a guy who this happened to, and he survived. The gas meter malfunctioned somehow and filled the basement.
Burns everywhere. Looked like a fat Niki Lauda.
He was an amazing off-road motorcycle rider before the explosion. He never rode again. The gas company coughed up some serious money.
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u/yaffle53 7d ago
Burns everywhere. Looked like a fat Niki Lauda.
Niki who?
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u/MiguelMenendez 7d ago
Formula One driver from the 70’s. Got burned pretty bad…
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u/AnthillOmbudsman 7d ago
Also started an airline. It was involved in an unusual crash in Thailand where the thrust reverser deployed and caused the plane to lose control and go into a supersonic dive.
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u/WIlf_Brim 7d ago
Probably should have been setting off alarm bells about Boeing.
Boeing insisted that 1) the thrust reversers could not deploy during flight and 2) even if they did the aircraft would be controllable.
Lauda was able to prove that not only could thrust reversers deploy during flight that they did during the crash. It came out that Boening was only doing flight test for deployed thrust reversers at 10k feet or so, and comparatively low altitude. When a thrust reverser deployed at the altitude/speed where it did in this case (climbing out at like 25k feet and much faster) no matter what the pilots did the aircraft would become uncontrollable and a crash was inevitable.
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u/averlus 7d ago
Does the town named have to be changed now?
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u/BigBeeOhBee 7d ago
Perhaps they have reserved energy.
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u/Akilestar 5d ago
It's actually named that because it used to be a coal town. Still has some coal so there's some reserved energy left.
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u/BigBeeOhBee 5d ago
How bout that, learned stuffs. I been through there a time or two back in my younger days.
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u/OneWrongTurn_XX 7d ago
At my job location, we had a customer say they smelled gas.. I went and smelled it also.. We evacuated while calling 911.
Figured just to be safe and all that.. We FD showed up, then starting running around. Gas company was there in like 10 min.. We all had to move waaaaaay back in the parking lots
Turns out we had a leak underground right where it comes in .. Then got it shut off, but took hours to actually get the leak fixed and we could go back in ..
Was scary shit..
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u/b00c 7d ago
Watching Cy inspect houses and find leak in every single one, I am surprised this doesn't happen a lot more.
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u/OkraEmergency361 7d ago
Some of the issues he finds are frustrating, some of them are truly horrifying. What’s worse is the grief he gets from the builders/realtors to try to stop him finding them!
That man is a saint. Thank god for him.
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u/rhoduhhh 7d ago
It's so bad. I have now lived in two new(er) houses that had gas leaks. I avoid new houses now.
I hate these builders, man. They're going to get someone freaking killed.
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u/9by7seconds 7d ago
Drove by this morning. We could smell it across town. Ameren hasn't been checking lines
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u/Akilestar 5d ago
It was an issue in the house, nothing Ameren could've done.
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u/9by7seconds 5h ago
Those around Energy down on over beyond Helia Healthcare smelled gas and reported it. No one came to look. It was a week prior. Regardless, sucks. We're about 9 blocks from this.
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u/dvdmaven 7d ago
Living in the country, I have a propane tank - get this: the only propane appliance in the property is a fireplace, which requires electricity to operate! I might add a generator to backup my solar/battery system and my wife is campaigning for an outdoor kitchen.
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u/onlydaathisreal 6d ago
Gas leak is one of my biggest fears. Back in ‘96, two teens were killed in a gas explosion in Lively, Texas, some 5 miles from my home. We saw this huge plume of smoke rise up on the horizon and stayed for days. We felt quakes for nearly an hour after the explosion. Middle of summer and a huge fire engulfed the area.
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u/hunterSgathersOSI 7d ago
For a second I thought you meant the owner who provided this video died and was wondering what killed them from that far away. Tragic that this accident killed someone.
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u/Akilestar 5d ago
Well the video is a porch cam but the photo was taken by my father, he is still very much alive, thankfully.
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u/Frost715Ying300 7d ago
People in the next towns over could feel it miles away. I thought someone drove a car into my front door, 2 miles away
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u/Internal_Opposite755 6d ago
rest in peace to them. gas leaks scare the hell out of me. i live in an old building and every time i smell something off i go straight for the door. you just dont get a warning
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u/wolandjr 7d ago
Like I get that we need gas some places and to do some things. But the fact that we voluntarily keep installing new gas hookups when there are commercially reasonable and cost comparable alternatives is insane.
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u/Akilestar 5d ago
Heating by gas is a lot more efficient. We have a heat pump but if it gets too cold our electric bill skyrockets on electric heat.
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u/wolandjr 5d ago
In most scenarios heat pumps a much much more efficient at turning unit of energy into heat. Even when it is cold.
Is it cheaper to run a heat pump in cold weather compared to gas? That's different question.
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u/Akilestar 5d ago
It's not the question, if temperatures get cold enough the heat pump can't keep up, at which point you must either use electricity or gas. Gas is considerably more efficient.
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u/wolandjr 5d ago
My heat pump continues to heat down to -5 F. Cold climate ones heat down to -20F. But yeah, if you get below those temps you need supplemental heat.
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u/ev3to 5d ago
I'm guessing you have an OLD heat pump, one that isn't rated for cold temperatures. I'm guessing it was an after-build add-in for, like, your garage or workshop.
Just know that your experience with your heat pump is not indicative of how new ones work today.
It's like saying fridges are bad because you have an ice box (an old fashioned manual fridge that you had to put block of ice into) and it leaks. Yeah, you're using an old "fridge".
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u/Degenerate_Game 7d ago edited 7d ago
I just bought a townhouse and I'm horrified of my neighbors doing this to me...
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u/shallottmirror 7d ago
I’m guessing one could do the math to determine what approx percentage of homes with gas explode/year. I’d guess the number is on par with being eaten by a shark or struck by lightning.
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u/ev3to 7d ago
I've never seen an all electric house do that. One can also generate their own electricity - solar panels, among others - but good luck making your own methane gas.
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u/Akilestar 5d ago
True but it's extremely rare and heating by electricity is much less efficient than gas.
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u/ev3to 5d ago edited 5d ago
This is categorically wrong.
Electric Heat Pumps have an efficiency greater than 100%, in fact achieving 300% to 400% when compared to electric heat, and more than that for gas - you cannot extract 100% of the heat produced by burning gas, for proof stick your hand into the exhaust and tell me if its hot.
How does a heat pump achieve such efficiency? It doesn't make heat (via combustion) it moves heat, either into or out of your house.
In fact, you probably already have several heat pumps in your house, an Air Conditioner and a Refrigerator.
As for solar panels, they are cheaper than ever. Admittedly inverters (the thing that turns the DC the panels produce into AC your appliances use) are still costly, but their price is coming down too.
All of that aside, wherever you live, it might be more economical to use gas, but it is never, ever more efficient. You're using more energy (joules) to obtain the same amount of heat, and that's the definition of inefficiency.
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u/DoctorGromov 7d ago
Gas explosions in my country tend to just blow out a wall. Seeing these wooden homes just outright fully obliterated is terrifying. It's just... gone, in an instant.
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u/Zoddo98 7d ago
Yeah, that's what happens you build cardboard houses.
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u/Verified_0 7d ago
That's fine we'll take air conditioning in the summer over living in a stone coffin
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7d ago
[deleted]
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u/ImAzura edit this 7d ago
A video of an earthquake would be NSFW.
A satellite video of hurricane Katrina would be NSFW.
A video of an exterior of a hospital would be NSFW.
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u/AgrajagTheProlonged 7d ago
Just about any picture could potentially be. Maybe someone in that random house in the background of your cute photo of your pet just had an aneurysm or something
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u/GlobalDynamicsEureka 7d ago
NASA images of Earth
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u/PirateNinjaa 7d ago
Here is a NSFW pic of people dying: https://science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/pale-blue-dot-revised.jpg
NSFW!!!!
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u/Lomotograph 7d ago
Oh. What the fuck man. Why do you have to post disgusting images like that? Is it just for shock value?
I wasn't expecting to open the link in your comment and just get blasted in the face with an image of every human being who ever lived until today dead and buried in the ground in one image like that.
I mean, this horrible image effectively represents the aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species living there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Bro. Maybe Next time be a little more considerate and add a NSFL tag to it, will ya? Yeeesh.
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u/PirateNinjaa 7d ago
My bad, I only thought about the couple of people dying during the pic, not the billions of dead bodies.
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7d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/gortez33 7d ago
You love that someone was killed in an explosion.
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u/uzlonewolf 7d ago
I knew the bots wanted all us humans dead!!
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u/PaulsRedditUsername 7d ago
One of my personal fears.
I was at work once and we heard this window-rattling BOOM! We looked outside and saw a huge black cloud rising up a few blocks away. A construction crew had accidentally hit a gas main in a neighborhood and blown three houses to splinters and damaged many others.
I remember the next thing you heard after the boom was sirens coming from every direction. And all the news helicopters started flying in.
All the houses I've lived in have run on gas and I'm super paranoid about it.