The natural gas explosion that leveled a popular restaurant in Kansas City a year ago this month was completely preventable. It is a textbook example of how using out-of-date practices in utility line marking and locating for construction excavation can lead to avertible tragedy. Mistakes like this are not only preventable, they are in fact inexcusable, given the readily availability state-of-the art technologies designed to help avoid these kinds of disasters.
One would hope that safety should always take priority in policy making. Most injuries in the infrastructure industry are the unintended consequences of individual actions in a risky environment, but as in this case, the final results stem from industry standards at an unacceptably low level. Professionals tasked with locating utility lines must ensure that excavations avoid hitting those lines, at all costs. When that doesn’t happen, the results can be catastrophic. In the case of this particular restaurant, the ultimate cost was one person’s tragic death and the injuries of 15 others.