Staff file photo / Ed Runyan This aerial photo shows first responders outside the damaged Realty Tower in downtown Youngstown after a natural gas explosion May 28, 2024. The National Transportation Safety Board released numerous documents Wednesday related to the incident, but its investigation is not complete.

YOUNGSTOWN — The National Transportation Safety Board has not completed its investigation into the cause of the deadly May 28, 2024, explosion at the Realty Tower downtown, but it released documents Wednesday suggesting that gas company attempts to shut off the gas that caused the explosion fell short.

Workers who cut into the line thought the line no longer carried pressurized natural gas, but it did, the NTSB stated in its June 14, 2024, preliminary investigative report.

Chief among the 52 documents released Wednesday was a “Pipeline Operations” review that quotes from East Ohio Gas Co. / Dominion Energy documents. Some show the steps the company took over the years to shut off the natural gas service in the basement of the Realty Tower.

The report cites examples in which there is no evidence showing that requests for the gas to be shut off were completed.

Keith Holloway, NTSB spokesman, said the documents released Wednesday contain “factual information only,” adding that “analysis, probable cause & contributing factors will be determined at the conclusion of the investigation. A typical NTSB investigation can take between 12 and 24 months to complete,” he stated in an email.

The 2:44 p.m. explosion killed Akil Drake, a J.P. Morgan-Chase Bank employee who was at work in the bank at the time of the explosion. It injured others and led to the building being demolished.

Numerous lawsuits also resulted, blaming the catastrophic blast on the companies that owned and managed the building and the multiple natural gas-related companies that serviced the building over the years.

In September of 2023, Enbridge Inc. announced the acquisition of multiple U.S.-based natural gas utilities, including East Ohio Gas Co. from Dominion Energy Inc. on March 6, 2024, according to the newly released document.

The document lists the interactions that East Ohio Gas Co. / Dominion Energy had with Realty Tower.

One section states that the 1-inch diameter inactive service line that caused the explosion was manually cut and abandoned on Sept. 11, 2015. But that “record was inaccurate,” the new document states.

Typically, when workers are asked to cut and abandon an inactive (meaning not used) service line, that task would be assigned to a gas company’s Construction & Maintenance crew, who would perform the work and complete the documentation electronically in the Customer Care System, the new document states.

“However, (the Sept. 11, 2015) work was manually entered into the (Customer Care System) by a customer relations specialist,” the document states. East Ohio Gas “expected there to be a paper form … that led to the manual entry, but no record has been found at the time of this report,” the new document states.

East Ohio Gas Co.’s documentation regarding the Sept. 11, 2015, service at the Realty Tower shows that the “Curb Box Off” and “Cut Code” boxes were checked, “indicating that the curb valve was closed and the service line was cut, physically removing its connection to the main,” the new document states.

On Feb. 9, 2017, the Public Utilities Protection Service (or Ohio 811) was called to alert East Ohio Gas (then Dominion) staff that their unmarked gas pipeline was struck by an excavator and may have a possible leak. The responding Dominion employee(s) indicated that there was no gas leak, the line was not hit, the line was not marked and the line had been abandoned per the (gas company’s Construction & Maintenance) crew,” the new document states.

The document also contains a chart showing seven instances between Nov. 4, 2004, and Feb. 9, 2017, in which East Ohio Gas workers had a connection to the gas line that caused the explosion. The chart gives the job title of the person involved, the last day the employee worked for the company, the title of the employee’s supervisor and the last day that person worked for the company.

The new document states that the natural gas infrastructure near the Realty Tower was marked in yellow paint Jan. 23, 2024, in response to a project involving the abandonment of vaults under the sidewalk next to the Realty Tower.

“The natural gas assets in this area were marked in yellow paint again on May 4, 2024. Neither the Jan. 23, 2024, nor the May 4, 2024, markings identify the inactive service line” that caused the explosion, the new document states.

POLICIES REVIEWED

The document states that after the Realty explosion, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio reviewed the Enbridge Gas Customer Care System that listed the service line that caused the explosion as abandoned.

“The PUCO discovered there were several groups of services in the system that may be listed as abandoned inaccurately. One group looks like they were shifted to abandoned status through an (information-technology push to clean up some data,” the new document states.

“To get a sense of how broad that problem was in downtown Youngstown, they picked a group of services with abandonment dates in a similar range to the one involved in this event to be excavated, and several of those were also found to still be live,” the new document states.

“Since that discovery, the company has started a broader program to look at services across all of Ohio and has identified a few groups of services that need further investigation to see if they are truly abandoned,” the new document states.

It lists several changes to Enbridge Gas Ohio policies since the Realty explosion. One relates to work orders for abandonment of a natural gas service line.

One way a record regarding a service line can be changed from active to abandoned is a manual procedure. “After this incident (Enbridge) initiated a prioritized quality control initiative to confirm that all service lines in (Enbridge) digital records that had been manually changed from ‘Active’ to ‘Abandoned’ were physically abandoned,” the document states.

It’s not clear what is meant by “physically abandoned.”