had respirators at the job site. On April 7, 2 men were performing maintenance on a town border gas meter in Weimar, Texas when the meter exploded, injuring one of the men. A casting defect in the meter was determined to be the cause of the explosion. A gas company crew in Mansfield, Ohio accidentally tied a high pressure gas main into a low pressure gas main on May 17. Much higher gas flames in gas appliances caused damage in 16 homes, and about 2,000 gas meters were shut off during the incident. On June 12, a 10-inch gas pipeline was hit by a construction crew in Kansas City, Missouri. Almost 2 hours later, escaping gas ignited, causing burns to 2 men from a crew trying to fix the pipeline leak. On August 4, A MAPCO LPG pipeline in Donnellson, Iowa ruptured from past mechanical damage and improper lowering for road improvements. The vapor cloud ignited several minutes after the rupture. Three people were killed and 2 others severely burned. The pipe failed at a dented and gouged area not seen during the original construction, or lowering for road work a few months before. A hydrostatic test on this pipeline after the accident caused failures at 2 other dented & gouged section, and 15 ERW seam failures in 117 miles. The Office of Pipeline Safety later on fined MAPCO $4,000 for the failure. On August 7, in Lafayette, Louisiana, natural gas at 15 psig pressure escaped from a corrosion leak in an inactive 1-inch steel service line and migrated beneath a concrete slab and into a building where it ignited. The resulting explosion and fire injured six persons and destroyed the building and its contents. On August 14, a coal digging crew in Cairo, Missouri hit a MAPCO LPG pipeline with a backhoe. The gas ignited about 2 hours later, as digging crews were still working nearby. 1 worker was burned, along with the backhoe, a bulldozer, and a diesel fuel tank. On August 28, natural gas, which had escaped from a circumferential fracture in a socket heat-fusion coupling on a 2-in. polyethylene (PE) main, operating at 40-psig pressure, migrated beneath a one-story house in Grand Island, Nebraska, exploded, and then burned. One person was injured; the house was destroyed; and three adjacent houses were damaged. About 16,000 gallons of gasoline were spilled in Hampton, Pennsylvania on August 30. Workers