Gas explosions in Jackson, Mississippi in January 2024 were linked to underground conditions and to how a gas utility assessed known leaks, according to federal findings released this week.
In its investigation report, the National Transportation Safety Board said the explosions happened after gas pipes feeding the homes pulled loose from their couplings. The NTSB said the soil conditions in much of the Jackson area—Yazoo clay—expand in wet weather and contract during drought, and that the expansion and contraction can loosen pipes and disconnect pipe couplings. Once loose connections allowed dangerous levels of gas to accumulate, the board said, the stage was set for explosions.
The board said Atmos Energy Corp., which is based in Dallas, had detected the leaks before the blasts. However, the NTSB found that Atmos did not evaluate the leaks as severe enough to trigger quick repair, and it also found what it described as safety and risk-management shortcomings, including how the company assessed risks to its pipeline system and what it did to educate the public and emergency officials about responding to gas leaks.
The first explosion, on Jan. 24 in south Jackson, killed Clara Barbour, 82, and slightly injured her husband, Johnny Barbour, according to the NTSB findings described by the Associated Press. Investigators said another explosion and fire followed three days later, about three-quarters of a mile (1.1 kilometers) away, leveling one home and burning a neighboring home, with no reported injuries there.
The NTSB said that at the Barbour home, a gas leak had been detected Nov. 17, 2023 after the homeowner smelled an odor compound inserted into methane gas. The board said an Atmos technician declared that leak nonhazardous and that Atmos might not repair it for a year or more. For the second home, the board said Atmos detected a leak on Dec. 1 but evaluated it as even less hazardous, scheduling it for repair within three years.
The report also said Atmos later re-evaluated leaks in Jackson after the explosion and found additional leaks that the company determined were more serious than initially reported. The NTSB added that expansive soils had drawn regulatory warnings as early as 2008 and that it had identified expansive soils as a factor in a 2018 Atmos explosion in Dallas that killed one person and injured four.
Investigators faulted Atmos for what they said were inconsistent safety procedures between states, and said stricter state rules in Kansas—if followed in Mississippi—could have prevented the Jackson explosions. In a quotation included in the AP report, the NTSB wrote that “Atmos has had significant safety shortfalls in recent years” and that “Thus, Atmos’s multistate operations require broader oversight.” The board also said Atmos’s “siloed state operations,” including leak-monitoring procedures that differed by state, showed that the company did not apply lessons learned in one state to other states where it operates.
Atmos Energy spokesperson Bobby Morgan said the company considers safety its top priority, in a statement reported by AP. Morgan said Atmos “will work diligently in the coming days and weeks to evaluate the findings as part of our ongoing safety efforts to further our vision to be the safest provider of natural gas services.”
The NTSB urged regulators to take a closer look at Atmos and recommended that Atmos find and replace couplings installed by an Atmos predecessor that the board said are not resistant to pulling out in expansive clay soil conditions. The company distributes natural gas in Colorado, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.