It sounded like the roar of a jet engine as the torrent of highly pressurized natural gas rushed out of the ruptured pipeline, stirring up a dust storm that choked the air. Then came a fireball that could be seen from 30 miles away, with temperatures reaching 3,000 degrees. When the blaze finally subsided, one witness said, the work site near Cheyenne, Wyo., looked like the surface of the moon.

Near the burnt husk of a bulldozer lay the charred body of Bobby Ray Owens, his arms raised to his face in a futile defensive posture.

“He was just vaporized,” said Robert Painter, a Houston lawyer who represented Owens’ survivors in a civil lawsuit. “It was like Hiroshima. This is what they’re trying to bring into your backyard.”

Owens, 52, of Louisiana, was operating a bulldozer for a subcontractor on the Rockies Express Pipeline outside Cheyenne about 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 11, 2006, when his ripper blade struck an existing pipeline, causing a rupture and explosion. He had no way of knowing there was another pipeline there: Nobody put up yellow warning flags.

“You could not have asked for a better person as a friend,” said Owens’ former girlfriend, Maggie Martin of Blythe, Calif. “I never knew what love was until I met him.”

The owner of the pipeline that exploded, El Paso Corp., settled a lawsuit filed by Owens’ survivors alleging that El Paso failed to properly stake the pipeline’s route. Owens’ family is still suing Rockies Express, or REX, claiming it also bears responsibility for failing to ensure a safe workplace. REX officials declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.

Pipeline-related deaths and injuries aren’t rare. Since 1986, 65 people have died from incidents involving transmission lines like the REX pipeline, and another 356 people died in distribution line accidents.

All told, those accidents caused more than 1,700 injuries and an estimated $1.9 billion in property damage, according to the Transportation Department’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

Owens was killed during construction of REX West, the first half of the interstate pipeline that will soon cut through Ohio. Two months after Owens’ death, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission threatened to shut the project down if REX didn’t improve its “poor compliance record” involving construction activity outside the approved work area.

REX admitted that in January 2007 it instructed the same subcontractor that hired Owens to work in a severe snowstorm “in an effort to meet in-service deadlines.” The snow was so deep, the crews couldn’t see its work space boundaries and wandered off the right of way. “In hindsight, it may have been more prudent to suspend construction until the weather improved,” REX told FERC in a letter.

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local/2008/09/14/ddn091408pipelinesafety.html