A gas pipeline station exploded in Middle Tennessee, sending one person to the hospital Friday morning.
Anyone within a one-mile radius of the pipeline facility in Hickman County was evacuated, and authorities have set up temporary shelters.
Natural gas pipelines transport fracked methane, a greenhouse gas that is highly flammable and can act as an asphyxiant. Prolonged exposure to methane gas can cause permanent brain damage and death.
To use gas for energy, either electricity or heating and cooking in homes, gas is extracted from beneath Earth’s surface and transported along pipelines. Gas is pressurized at stations periodically along the path of a pipeline. The explosion on Friday occurred at a pressure station on Highway 48 in Nunnelly, about an hour southwest of Nashville.
The pipeline is part of the Tennessee Gas Pipeline, which is owned by Kinder Morgan, the fossil fuel company building a pipeline for the Tennessee Valley Authority’s new gas plant in Cumberland. The new pipeline will run through Stewart, Houston and Dickson counties and connect to this same system, which covers more than 11,000 miles from Boston to the Gulf of Mexico.
This is a developing story. Information is subject to change.
This post was last updated at 3:50 p.m. Friday.
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