Alabama Gas Explosion Heightens Concern Over Corroded Pipelines

When Darryle Brown woke up in the dark hours of an early December morning, he heard an explosion. Suddenly, Brown was on fire and trapped underneath an eight-inch-thick concrete slab — the floor of his fiancée’s two-story apartment unit in Birmingham, Ala., according to his attorney, Glenda Cochran. Most people who heat their houses, apartments and businesses with natural gas don’t think twice about the age or the condition of the pipes delivering this resource — or that they could potentially be deadly.