Something seems suspicious. I've seen crews take those metal probes, stick them in the ground and take measurements.
For that to puncture a gas pipe seems strange. If the pipe was really that shallow and in that bad of shape than someone besides the worker has some explaining to do.
“Dig Safe” fail
There are old piped utilities all over the nation. A good understanding of all the factors that control service life was only really really reached in the last 25 years. All utilities put in place prior to that are a crap shoot.
You have concrete resistance to certain chemicals, cathodic protection, pipe materials and joining, bedding issues and proximity of other utilities with constant changes. This sort of problem is very common and it is often luck that keeps the failures from being this bad more often.
Saw video of the entire explosion this morning. Why the city cam was pointed at a strip club may remain a mystery.
Affairs Secretary Richard K. Sullivan Jr., who oversees the DPU, will ultimately oversee the probe at this point
Hey guys, let's go down to the entertainment district and go probing, it'll be a blast!
Entertainment District?
It's a Combat Zone...Red Light District.
I’ve seen gas utilties use long drill bits to create test holes into which they drop gas detector tubes to determine if gas is leaking under the surface of say an asphalt driveway.
As a utility worker that sometimes requires a "line spot" to complete some below ground work, we had an incident were one of the power utilities sent an idiot to do the check. We were driving grounding rods into sand/clay/loam-type soil and needed to go down quite a ways for a good ground. The power company sent someone over and they looked at their drawings and told us there was nothing down there. Couple hours later water & sewer and the gas company showed up and marked their respective lines. I noticed on both their drawings they showed buried power lines. Called the power company back and requested a redo on the line spot. Argued with the foreman about it for 20 minutes and pissed him off so bad he went with his supervisor, just so he had a witness that I'm an idiot before he called my division manager. Lo and behold, there were 7 1-million volt lines right where we were going to drive solid copper grounding rods. Never did get an apology, just some smug satisfaction and the fact that I was alive at the end of another day.
The pipe in that photo was near failure anyway, it’s 90% rust.