BUS'S NATURAL GAS TANK EXPLODES : REFUELING INCIDENT SPURS REVIEW OF MTA FLEET.Byline: Jaxon Van Derbeken and David Bloom David Bloom (May 22, 1963 – April 6, 2003) was an NBC journalist (co-anchor of Weekend Today and reporter) until his sudden death in 2003 at the age of 39. Early life Daily News Staff Writers An explosion of a natural gas tank on a Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus during refueling has triggered an emergency inspection of the 120-bus fleet, officials said Thursday. The buses, which have been used without a similar incident by the MTA (1) (Message Transfer Agent or Mail Transfer Agent) The store and forward part of a messaging system. See messaging system. (2) See M Technology Association. 1. (messaging) MTA - Message Transfer Agent. since May 1995, were being inspected into the evening Thursday before being returned to service. No one was injured in the blast Wednesday evening that shot metal fragments through the floor of the empty bus. ``It just flat blew up,'' MTA Chief Executive Officer Joseph Drew said about the 6:45 p.m. explosion in the MTA's Division 15 yard at 11900 Branford St. in Sun Valley. Drew called the incident ``an isolated one'' and said the inspection was ordered as a precaution. ``I'm satisfied from an engineering standpoint that our buses are safe,'' he said. Drew said that any of several factors could have caused the explosion of the tank - one of 10 affixed af·fix tr.v. af·fixed, af·fix·ing, af·fix·es 1. To secure to something; attach: affix a label to a package. 2. to each MTA bus powered by Compressed Natural Gas Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is a substitute for gasoline (petrol) or diesel fuel. It is considered to be an environmentally "clean" alternative to those fuels. It is made by compressing natural gas (which is mainly composed by methane (CH4 or CNG CNG Compressed Natural Gas CNG Calling (Tone) CNG Comfort Noise Generation CNG Cryptography Next Generation (Microsoft Windows Vista) CNG Centre National de Génotypage . Investigators have not ruled out fueling error, or defects in the tank or the fuel-line system as possible root causes. Among the areas being inspected on the buses were the anchoring straps for the tanks, the fuel-line system and the tanks themselves. Early Thursday, a fuel explosion expert was flown in from Texas to examine the damaged fuel tank. Also called in was a representative from the natural gas industry. The MTA also will convene a panel of experts that include representatives of the Canadian firm that makes the fuel tank, EDO Edo: see Tokyo, Japan. Canada Ltd. of Calgary, as well as the Colorado-based bus maker, Neoplan USA This article is about the defunct US bus builder. For the German bus builder, see Neoplan. Neoplan USA was a major transit bus manufacturing company based in Denver, Colorado, which was entirely separate from the German corporation, Neoplan, licensing its . Apart from the damage to the bus and tank, there was no fire sparked by the explosion, officials said. In addition to the 120 CNG buses in service, the MTA still is awaiting the arrival of about 170 of the buses it ordered last year. In June, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is the five member governing board of Los Angeles County, California. Members of the board of supervisors are elected by district, the current members as of April 2006 are:
The MTA has three natural gas refueling stations in Chatsworth, Sun Valley and East Los Angeles East Los Angeles, uninc. city (1990 pop. 126,379), Los Angeles co., S Calif., a residential suburb of Los Angeles, in an industrial area. It has a large Mexican-American population. There is a performing arts center and a cultural center. A junior college is there. . Michael Dickerson, who serves on the citizens advisory committee to the MTA, said the rupture raises concerns just as the authority is looking at natural gas to get out of a huge failed investment in methanol buses. ``Anytime you have something like that rupture, when you have that kind of structural failure, you have a tremendous potential for danger,'' Dickerson said. He said that CNG is now the most promising alternative fuel available, adding that methanol- and ethanol-fueled buses have not performed as well as expected. ``If we can't run CNG safely, we have a very severe problem,'' he said. ``What else are you gonna run them on? You can't use rubber bands on the damn things.'' Drew said that the MTA has operated its CNG fleet without mishap for more than 4.5 million miles, and that the manufacturer of the tanks has installed about 6,000 nationwide with no reports of failure. |
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