Nyack Gas Line Blast

40 years ago, I was working as a Teller at the savings & loan on Broadway in Nyack. I watched the crews digging up the old cast iron gas lines in the street to put in new high pressure lines. The plastic lines were being pulled through the old lines.

Nyack’s gas lines, I later found out, date to the 1870s. The cast iron was so rusted in the street that it had no metallic iron left in it, but was basically a hole in the dirt and very fragile. The plastic lines used the old pipes, or what was left of them as guide as the crews pulled them through.

The old lines survived just about 100 years from 1870 to about 1970 – when I was working in Nyack.

The new high pressure line lasted only about 40 years before someone decided to cut the old pipe line with a cutter and set the thing on fire. So much for high tech.

[VIDEO] Nyack Gas Line Blast: Towering Flames Greeted Volunteer Firefighters – Nyack-Piermont, NY Patch.