Natural gas leak caused Centreville home explosion, NTSB report says

One month after a massive explosion leveled a home in Centreville, Virginia and injured two people and forced nearly 50 homes in the area to evacuate, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators confirmed in a preliminary report Monday that a natural gas leak led to the incident.

The timeline is also raising new questions.

The explosion that destroyed the home on Quail Pond Court happened just before 10 p.m, according to the report.

The NTSB report confirms what many in this neighborhood have told News4: that morning at about 10 a.m., roughly 12 hours earlier, a neighbor across the street called Washington Gas to report a smell of gas.

The NTSB says the technician located a Grade 1 leak, which is considered serious and a possible threat to life, according to public utility commissioners. It was in the process of being repaired when the explosion occurred.

According to the report, the source of that leak was identified as a section of six inch diameter gas main, with which Washington Gas supplies the neighborhood for domestic use.

After the explosion, subsurface natural gas — or “leaked gas — was detected where that six inch Washington Gas main crosses under the three very large — 30, 40 and 42 inches in diameter — Williams pipelines in the grassy right-of-way that runs through the community, according to the report.

The report also says Washington Gas did not cut off gas to the community until almost three hours after the explosion. That is when 46 homes were evacuated, and the stressful process of finding the leak and fixing it began for people living there.