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A Dallas girl didn’t have to die in a natural gas explosion. A federal agency explains why.

NTSB finds that Atmos Energy failed to cut gas off or evacuate homes prior to 2018 blast.

A natural gas explosion that killed a 12-year-old girl at her Dallas home three years ago was an avoidable tragedy, a federal agency concluded Tuesday, citing steps the local gas company could have taken but did not.

“The disaster could’ve been prevented if Atmos Energy had done what they needed to do,” said Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.

Namely, he said, the company could have shut down a leaking pipeline and evacuated homes after the first signs of problems in the days before Linda Rogers died.

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“Unfortunately, that did not happen,” Sumwalt said. “I realize that hindsight is 20/20; we have the advantage of that. But nevertheless, there’s a 12-year-old who lost her life.”

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Linda Michelle Rogers
Linda Michelle Rogers

In a statement posted online Tuesday, Atmos said it was reviewing the NTSB’s findings and recommendations. The company did not address the board’s conclusion that Atmos crews should have shut down the gas lines and evacuated the neighborhood before Linda died.

Instead, Atmos focused on a cracked gas line behind the Rogers home, noting that an independent excavator damaged the main in the mid-1990s and never reported the damage as required by law.

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“Unreported third party damage caused the pipe to crack and leak,” Atmos said.

The company said safety is its top priority, “and we are resolved to learn from this tragic accident.”

The NTSB has no oversight or enforcement powers. Its main job is to make safety recommendations as it did Tuesday, issuing 14 suggestions to Atmos, Dallas Fire-Rescue, federal and state regulators, and a gas industry group. It also officially determined the likely cause of the fatal explosion.

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It remains to be seen whether Atmos will face any penalties from regulators including the Texas Railroad Commission, which oversees pipeline safety in the state.

In a written statement, the railroad commission said it “will review the findings and finalize our agency’s report, with any necessary actions, on the deadly accident.”

The board also noted that Dallas Fire-Rescue and Atmos did not work together to investigate and determine the causes of two house fires on the same block in the days before the blast that killed Linda.

A spokesman for Dallas Fire-Rescue said it would review and consider the board’s findings.

To understand what happened the morning of Feb. 23, 2018, when Linda Rogers was getting ready for a cheerleading competition at school, it’s important to know what happened in the days right before that.

On Feb. 21, a house exploded and caught fire on Durango Drive, sending one resident to the hospital with second-degree burns. An Atmos technician responded but didn’t detect any natural gas.

The next day, three houses down, a kitchen fire erupted and injured one occupant. This time, an Atmos tech sent for help, and more than a dozen workers began hunting for and repairing gas leaks. They found 13 leaks, including four hazardous ones, over several blocks.

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But workers later said their equipment didn’t work well in the wet weather, NTSB investigators found. Crews had trouble drilling holes in the ground to test for gas, because the holes kept filling with water.

Atmos crews were still in the neighborhood the morning the Rogers house on Espanola Drive exploded. At the time, neighbors told The News that it sounded like a large boom or a clap of thunder.

The NTSB said that given the first two house fires, and problems detecting leaks in the wet weather, Atmos should have shut down the gas lines and evacuated nearby homes.

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“That should’ve allowed them to start connecting the dots and say, ‘Something serious is going on here,’” Sumwalt said. “They didn’t react quickly enough.”

Investigators also questioned why Atmos didn’t use other methods to find the source of the gas leaks — namely, testing the pressure in gas lines in customers’ homes and the main that ran down the alley of all three homes, in the same city block. As it turns out, that alley main had a large crack that leaked gas — and it was that gas that caused the Rogers home to explode, the NTSB determined.

The 2-inch steel line was damaged in 1995 during a sewer replacement project. And at some point before February 2018, the line started to leak, NTSB officials said.

But when Atmos came to the neighborhood after the first two house fires in 2018, it didn’t find that leak.

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In the six weeks after Linda died, Atmos found more than 1,200 leaks across a large swath of northwest Dallas, NTSB officials said.

That indicates widespread issues with Atmos’ infrastructure — problems the company did not understand or react to, Sumwalt said.

NTSB members also rejected an argument by an Atmos engineering consultant in 2018 that the widespread leaks were caused by unique geologic formations and heavy rains, and that Atmos could not have predicted what would happen.

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One board member noted that 50 years ago, heavy rains and clay soils were a factor in another gas explosion in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, in North Richland Hills. At the time, the gas system — now part of Atmos — was owned by Lone Star Gas.

The board also renewed calls to gas, construction and fire protection industry groups to require methane detectors in homes and apartments.

Natural gas has a rotten-egg smell added, but it can fade, officials said. In fact, residents in the Rogers home’s area said they didn’t smell natural gas before the deadly explosion.

Sumwalt said the Dallas natural gas explosion prompted him to order a gas detector from Amazon. On Tuesday, during an online news conference, he held the package up on camera.

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The agency also called on federal regulators to give clear rules to Atmos and other gas operators on reporting gas-related incidents. Atmos failed to officially report the first two house fires to regulators, which delayed their response. The lack of clear rules, the board found, could result in such accidents being underreported.

The fatal explosion prompted an investigation by The Dallas Morning News, which found that more than two dozen homes across North and Central Texas had blown up since 2006 because of natural gas leaks along Atmos lines. Nine people died and more than 20 others were badly injured, our investigation found.

The News also reported that Atmos Energy had some of the country’s oldest natural gas pipes, which made them vulnerable to corrosion and cracks.

Atmos has since made major replacements and upgrades to its pipeline system in northwest Dallas and elsewhere in the city.

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The Rogers family filed a $1 million wrongful death lawsuit against Atmos in March 2018, alleging the company had failed to fix dangerous leaks in its pipeline system. The family reached a financial settlement with Atmos in May 2019 for an undisclosed amount.

Sumwalt said he talked with the family before Tuesday’s meeting.

“The family is devastated,” he said. “Something that you never get over is the loss of a child.”