The World - News from Feb. 20, 1989

A leak in a Soviet natural gas pipeline in a remote region of western Siberia released a huge cloud of lethal, flammable gas that threatened two villages early last week, the official Communist Party daily Pravda reported. However, the “poisonous and explosive” cloud was detonated by flares fired into it from a helicopter. The flares touched off a thunderous explosion and a fire that shot more than 300 feet into the air and measured nearly 2,000 feet in diameter, the paper said. The fire eventually burned itself out, and no one was injured in the incident last Tuesday, it added.