Gas Line Ruptures; Explosion Forces Evacuation

A natural gas pipeline ruptured Monday, causing an explosion and fireball that forced some evacuations in a rural area near this southwest Washington community.

There were no immediate reports of property damage or injuries.

Gas flow to the broken line was shut off and the fire burned itself out by late afternoon, officials said.

Several paper machines at the Weyerhaeuser Co.’s area paper mill, and subsidiary North Pacific Paper Co., which recycles newsprint, were shut down for about two hours, Weyerhaeuser spokesman Rullie Harris said. The facilities receive natural gas from the pipeline.

The Monday afternoon explosion shook houses along the Spirit Lake Memorial Highway. Flames shot high above the tops of 150-foot-tall fir trees.

Tom Bell, who shot video of the flames, said “a long, low rumble shook the windows, shook the ground. You would at first take it for the start of an earthquake.”

The blaze could be seen in Longview and Kelso, eight miles to the south.

The break was in a 26-inch main transmission line owned by Northwest Pipeline Co., said spokeswoman Sue Flaim at the company’s Salt Lake City headquarters.

The cause of the rupture was not immediately determined, she said.

The Cowlitz County sheriff’s department, Washington State Patrol and Northwest were investigating.

By 3:30 p.m., two hours after the explosion, crews from Northwest’s Olympia office had shut off valves on either side of the rupture, Flaim said, cutting off fuel to the fire.

Within an hour, the main fire was out, closed roads were reopened and evacuees were told they could return home, said the office of Cowlitz County Sheriff Brian D. Pederson.

The sheriff’s office did not immediately estimate how many people were evacuated.

Longview radio station KEDO reported that five acres of brush were burned. County authorities could not immediately confirm that.