Fatal fire at Romanian gas pipeline thought to be caused by negligence
Four dead and five injured after road workers suspected to have dug through the structure
Four people died and another five were taken to hospital with major burns after fire broke out on a natural gas pipeline in Romania.
The blaze in Vrancea county is thought to have started on Thursday night when workers on the A7 Moldova Motorway dug through the pipeline.
Transgaz said in a statement that the incident occurred at about 1.15am on the 145-kilometre segment of the 800-millimetre diameter regional pipeline running from the settlement of Sendreni to the village of Onesti in the eastern part of Romania.
The charred bodies were found by firefighters who brought the flames under control, according to Romania’s Department for Emergency Situations in Vrancea.
The road workers were apparently unaware of the route of the pipeline and its depth, the country’s state transmission operator, Transgaz, said in a statement today.
Gas suppliers and consumers were not affected by the accident, Transgaz added.
Transgaz sent its teams immediately to the site where they “undertook all the technical measures necessary for extinguishing the flame, isolating the damaged segment of the gas pipeline, eliminating risks to human life and the environment”, the company said.
The building contractor — identified by local media as UMB Spedition, the largest Romanian construction company — did not comply with the provisions of the site notice issued in 2021, according to Transgaz.
Transgaz also said the contract lacked its approval for a “technical project for the relocation and replacement of the gas pipeline intersected by the future motorway”.
The operator has been reported as mandating that no construction can be carried out less than 20 metres from a gas pipeline without having completed works to protect or relocate the pipeline.
Transgaz deputy director Cristian Schmidt has been quoted by Romania’s news outlet G4Media saying the damaged pipeline was under 35 bars of pressure at the time of the incident and was buried to the depth of between one and 1.2 metres.
The Department for Emergency Situations said: “At 1.30am, the state of emergency was announced at the county level in Vrancea. Additionally, a warning message was transmitted in the proximity of the incident area through the cell broadcasting system of mobile networks.
“The state of emergency was deactivated at 3.30am. Teams remain active for a complete investigation of the causes and to handle the consequences of this incident,” it added.
Authorities added later on Thursday that after a preliminary inquiry, they found no company or regional representatives were engaged into the supervision of the road works at the time of the incident as issued construction permits called for.
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