While I was working as Corrosion Specialist for a natural gas transmission pipeline, an emergency repair situation was found by a ILI tool inside a state highway casing next to a large farm house. The high pressure natural gas pipeline had a farm tap that supplied gas to the farm house. The pipeline passed through the front yard of the farm house and it was under the driveway to the house. The wall thinnnig reported by the ILI tool was significant enough that a rupture of the pipeline inside the casing was possible. The farm house was so close to the casing with the thin wall pipe that a rupture may have destroyed the farm house.
It became necessary to put the farm house family in a hotel while the replacement of the carrier pipe was being done as large pipeline construction equipment would be working in the house's front yard plus there would be no driveway. When the pipeline crew was close to pulling the carrier pipe out of the casing, the farmer's family arrived to find out how much longer they would have to live in a hotel. The farmer and his wife was talking to the pipeline foreman next to the highway and a little girl with her cute little dog was running around looking at all of the pipeline construction equipment. Several of the pipeline crew had suddenly the job of watching a little girl to make sure that she didn't get too close to something that could get her hurt. The girl and dog put the construction work on hold until she got back into the car with her parents and drove away to the hotel.
The bad pipe was pulled from the casing and the new replacement pipe installed. The pipeline was put back in service, the farm house driveway repaired, and the family moved back into their beautiful farm house. Since this was not a Sissonville WV like event where a rupture occurred that destroyed houses and damaged a major highway, it didn't make the national news. However, it happened even if it didn't make the news. For every natural gas pipeline rupture that occurres that makes the national news; there are many pipeline integrity repairs done that never makes the news.
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