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It’s Never Boring in St Judes – Near Miss Gas Explosion from a Gas Pipe Not Fitted to Building Regulations and Specifications Bristol

Chopsy Baby

At 9.08am on Thursday 07 December 2017, a lone figure burst from a block of flats, ran across the road and stormed through puddles in the pouring rain without shoes on. Nobody notices things like this in St Judes because it’s never boring around here.

That person was me and the reason I was running like my life depended on it was because at that point, my life depended on it. I was literally Bruce Willis running from the forthcoming explosion, minus the grubby white vest.

I had just been settling down to deal with emails and a hot coffee when 8 minutes into some repair work, the contractors declared they’d hit the gas pipe. Gas leak is not the right word for gas leak. I will never forget the deafening rushing sound gas makes as rivers of the stuff bursts through the tiniest of holes and filled the flat within seconds. This was no gas leak, this was gas disaster. Had I been a smoker or a candle burner, it would have been gas explosion. And the possibility of that was enormous given the number of smokers in the building.

Leaping over the trench in the concrete floor with gas literally tickling my arse, I was out the door with purse and phone and running down the hallway and stairs in terror. Other residents were warned to evacuate immediately, though one person in dressing gown refused to leave and went back to bed instead.

Tenants beginning to evacuate the building

It was several minutes later, one of the contractors appeared outside and asked how to switch off the gas supply to the flat. I had always assumed there was a magical service hatch that contractors could sonic open and flip a switch. There was, but we didn’t have a key to that.

Other residents were emerging, saying that they could smell the gas making its way through the corridors of the entire building. There was confusion about where to turn the gas off, how to turn the gas off and did someone have a key to turn the gas off. Eventually, the gas was turned off, but the building needed to be aired out. That must have been fun considering a surprise scaffolding had been erected right outside of the gas leak window meaning it could only be opened a few inches.

Scaffolding outside the window meant it was impossible to open up fully to ventilate

The enormity of the incident wasn’t lost. Three days’ later, I’m still having flashbacks to that absolute moment of terror. Whilst the first priority is to get everyone out safely, which more or less happened, there was that secondary moment I thought I was going to watch everything I owned explode through the windows.

Why did this incident even occur? Because despite assurances from the housing association who own the building that the gas pipes had been fitted to building regulations and standards, they had not been. The gas pipes were under concrete – screed – flooring. The reason the contractors were there to begin with was because the floor had collapsed above the gas pipes causing it to sink along the entire length of the corridor. This flooring needed to be cut out for the repairs where it had dropped. It was to emerge during this work that the gas pipes were too close to the surface and had connectors in them that shouldn’t have been there. If they had been put in correctly, the floor would not have collapsed causing the chain reaction of work being carried out to correct it and thus the building and residents at risk.

As the picture into the entire cock up emerged, I was becoming concerned by the fact that the gas pipes were not only unsafe, punctured, the entire floor turned into a trench, there was no heating or hot water and my children were due to be collected from school in about half an hour. This was not a situation I could bring children back to, so contacting Elim Housing I was put through to the maintenance manager who seemed prepared for the call, barked that the gas pipes were fitted according to building regulations and that I would have to put up with the trench and it was likely that I wouldn’t have gas for ‘a long time.’

That was when I tweeted the video of my floor to Elim Housing. I had emailed them on 19/11/2017, to take advice about the nature of the work that was to be carried out. Because I live with someone who has mobility difficulties, I needed assurance that I would not be left with a hole in the floor. Not only was I going to be left with a hole in the floor, I was going to be left with about twelve ft of hole in the floor. As it turns out, the floor was dug out and the gas pipes were replaced with the floor usableish from late that evening, though it wasn’t practical to remain there because another layer had to be added to the floor and I couldn’t move furniture out of the bedrooms.

All in all, it seems that not much has been learned from Grenfell. Poor gas pipe installation not to building regs nearly ended up blowing up the building. People could have died. Elim Housing didn’t contact tenants involved. The ones standing outside in the rain without coats in December for an hour or so wondering if the building was going to go up.

The situation could have ended very differently. There has been apologies from Elim after I demanded a phone call first thing the next day. Initially it was a very try and say sorry and hang up the phone quickly sorry. But no, questions need to be asked about how this could have happened. Burying one’s head in the sand during an emergency with a stock answer – they were fitted to building regs and you won’t have gas for a long time – isn’t good enough. No, the gas pipes were not fitted safely and the first thing to ask is why? Are the other gas pipes fitted safely? And how can we assure tenants and home owners in the building that this will not happen again.

Just for fun, the What To Do If You Smell Gas poster for residents was in the locked cupboard which nobody could access.