Natural gas pipeline explosion aftermath

LINCOLN COUNTY, Ky. (WTVQ) — The people hurt and without homes from the gas line explosion in Lincoln County are still trying to figure out what comes next.

Homes gone, cars melted, grass destroyed, and an asphalt road turned into gravel.

People say this part of Moreland now looks like Mars.

“My heart goes out to these families that lost everything. I mean all their childhood memories, their wedding photos,” says Jason Griffiths, who owns the land right beside the explosion site.

Friday, officials were out assessing the damage trying to put a number on it.

The Lincoln County EMA director, Don Gilliam, says he thinks there’s probably half-a-million to a million dollars worth worth of damage, not even including the pipeline itself.

He says people living here have been forced out of their homes.

“There’s a hardship created because they can’t get in there simply because it’s not deemed safe,” says Gilliam.

He says there’s a lot of work to be done; electric lines have to be checked, water lines, and other pipelines.

“That’s the first time I’ve seen that, and I hope it’s the last,” says Griffiths.

His hay field was destroyed in the explosion.

He lives just beyond it, about two football fields from the explosion.

Most people don’t even see one pipeline explosion in a lifetime, Griffiths says his wife has now witnessed two – this one and another in Garrard County back in 1986.

“She saw the flame and she could hear the roar and just in seconds she could identify the roar before she even saw it she knew what it was because she had seen it before,” says Griffiths.

He says this time around he prayed the fire wouldn’t keep spreading.

“Cause it to stop right here, right now. Make it stop. And it stopped. It stopped right there,” says Griffiths with tears in his eyes.

He says it’s hard not to get emotional thinking about it and the victims left with nothing.