One Killed, 18 Injured in Texas Gas Explosion : Tragedy: An underground pipeline in the countryside bursts into flames, shaking the ground as far away as 100 miles. A boy, 6, dies.

The land looked as if it had been hit by a bomb.

When gas from an underground pipeline blew up near here Tuesday, the concussion killed a child and snapped trees. The ensuing flames burned off their leaves and singed the bark.

Cattle that had been grazing nearby--at least a dozen head--were knocked over and killed by the force of the blast. A trailer that was less than 100 yards away from where the pipeline exploded was ripped apart, its contents strewn over the landscape. The 6-year-old boy who was killed was thrown from that trailer. His body was found under a nearby tree.

The blast was so powerful--measuring close to 4.0 on the Richter scale--that its rumbling, ground-shaking destructiveness was felt more than 100 miles away.

All this was caused by the 7:15 a.m. eruption of an underground pipeline that runs through the countryside about seven miles south of Brenham, a city of about 11,000 residents about 60 miles northwest of Houston.

Richard Holloman, an investigator with the nearby Austin County Sheriff’s Department, sat bolt upright in his bed and then jumped out to warn his children that a tornado was about to hit.

“Then when I got up to holler at the kids, I knew it couldn’t be one because the sun was shining,” he said, standing near the trailer that had been destroyed in the explosion. Authorities said another eight to 10 homes had been badly damaged or destroyed and at least 18 people were injured.

James Tuppen, an oil-well firefighter from the legendary Houston-based Boots & Coots, drove to the site of the explosion after feeling the tremors earlier in the morning.

“It looks like the pipeline ruptured sometime during the night and there was not much wind so the gas was just lying there in the valley,” he said. “It was a heavy accumulation of gas and something touched it off. Maybe a car. And we had one hell of a blast.”

What touched the explosion off was under investigation Tuesday. Ron Haussecker, the Washington County director of emergency services, said almost anything could have ignited it, “even turning on a light bulb.”

He said there had been a work crew in the area earlier in the morning. There was also speculation that a car set off the explosion by driving through the valley where the gas had accumulated.

The six-inch pipeline is operated by Coastline Gas Pipeline Co., a subsidiary of the Houston-based United Texas Transmission Co., according to Gary Garrison, a spokesman for the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the state’s petroleum industry. He said the pipeline fed an underground storage well in neighboring Austin County. The line was last inspected on Aug. 8, he said, and no problems were found.

Said Floyd Von Minden, viewing the trailer where his niece, Jane Meinen, had been critically injured and his grand-nephew, Derrick Meinen, had been killed:

“It’s hard to tell how she even survived. It looks like a damn bomb hit it.”