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Propane Migration and Building Explosion in Puerto Rico

On a November morning in 1996, a massive explosion occurred in a commercial building in a busy shopping district in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The explosion caused 33 fatalities and numerous injuries. The building was destroyed and adjacent structures and vehicles were also damaged. APTECH was retained by the Plaintiffs' Steering Committee in San Juan to conduct an independent engineering investigation of origin and cause of the explosion. Government investigators previously had found several leaks in the underground propane/air pipes running near the building. Explosion and structural analyses by APTECH established that the origin of the explosion was in the basement of the building. This is consistent with the fuel that exploded being heavier-than-air propane, which would have settled into the basement. We also established that one of the propane leaks was sufficiently large, and the several-day period over which this leak is known to have existed was sufficiently long, that enough propane accumulated in the building's basement to cause the observed explosion damage. Soil testing by APTECH revealed the presence of residual propane gas in the soil and groundwater in and around the explosion site over one year after the explosion. Also, the soil at the site was found to be sufficiently porous to allow gas to migrate through it. Finally, during a field test at the site, we established that Argon gas introduced into the soil near the leak site readily migrated through the soil toward the building. An associated civil engineering expert concluded that any gas in the sewer pipes could not have entered the building. Based on APTECH's investigation and the work of other Plaintiffs' experts, we concluded that the origin of the explosion was in the building basement, the fuel for the explosion was propane, the source of the propane was leaking underground pipes, and that the propane migrated through the soil from the leaks to the basement.

Satish Almaula		Plant failure and root cause analysis; process and design engineering analysis; process technology development and testing; plant engineering, operations, maintenance and safety management; plant and process control system management.

Kimble Clark, Ph.D.		Gas migration analysis, failure analysis, chemical process analysis, heat transfer and thermodynamics, fuel science, industrial fires and explosions.

Richard Schreiber, P.E.		Gas migration field testing, failure analysis, heat transfer & thermodynamics, process plant equipment failures & explosions, fuel science, combustion, industrial fires and explosions.

Jeffrey Grover, P.E.		Mechanical engineering, failure analysis, civil engineering.