Rodney Lear

It was the middle of summer. A blast went off, and I was asleep in my living room. When I came to—and I’m going to say ‘came to’ because when I woke up, I felt like I’d been knocked out. I was disoriented. I didn’t know where I was, and my wife was screaming at me, “Rodney, Rodney, something’s happened!”

I heard a lot of noise. It sounded like a jet engine in the house screeching. The floors shaking. All of the pictures coming off the walls—everything. Well, right off the bat, I thought it was a tornado. So, I hollered to her, “Come to me, it’s a tornado! It’s on top of our head.” I took the futon, and I covered her over.

I laid on top of it, and I was waiting for the house to explode. All of a sudden, I heard three explosions, and I said, “Sheila, listen to that thunder! Sheila, this may be it; I think we’re going to die. Are you ready?” Then we held each other.

It flashed, and the flash didn’t go out like lightning. It just lit up the house like a candle. Middle of the night. It was 1:30 in the morning, and you could see a dime on the floor. I said, “What a minute, something’s not right.” I knew it wasn’t right. So, I ran to the front of the house and I opened up the front door. I could see a glow in the sky. It was ash and pieces of rocks and things. I said, “Oh my, something’s wrong.” 

So, I ran to the back of the house where the fire was at. We had really nice blinds in our house, and I slung the blinds open—and when I did, that light came into that house. 

I looked out the window, and that fire was all over my backyard, on my oil rig and everything.

I said, “Sheila, grab yourself and get something together. We got to get out of here. That gas line has blown up.” We ran out of that backdoor. Well, when we went out the backdoor and down the four steps, and she ran out there a little way, she fell—bowed all up and everything. She broke her back. 

I got her in the car. I got the dogs in the car. I took them up the road and turned right at the highway—fire was everywhere. That fire was 700 feet tall. It was just whipping back and forth. There were already rescue squad folks there. They were running around trying to find Lisa. Two rescue squad guys took a pickup truck in there, and they found Lisa. 

The whole fire burned for about 5 hours or so. We all just laid over there under that ditch. Then my son showed up, and he said when he went out his back door, he saw the fire in the sky 35 miles away. 

All the way to our place, he thought we were dead.

When I saw my son, he was happy to see me still alive.

The gas line was installed back in 1940. It’s been laying there—3 gas lines running right beside each other, all 30-something inches around. The one in the middle exploded. If the other two had exploded with it, it would have wiped us all out. We would be nothing left. They just didn’t do any maintenance. They sent a man to the shutoff valve, and it was frozen solid. They couldn’t even turn it—and that’s why it ended up burning 5.5 hours before they could get it put out.  

All of the multiple explosions. It wasn’t just one explosion. It was multiple explosions. 

It blew a 250-foot section of pipe out 400-something yards. It was a big giant crater in the ground. It burned the railroad tracks in two. It turned the railroad up on its end for a solid mile. They had to come in and cut it all out.

The company. They came to see me one day and made very little of me. Talked down their noses at me and everything—me and my wife. They were running around buying up everybody’s places for pennies on the dollar. A lot of good people left there and ended up in worse shape. If I had gone their way, I would have been in the same boat as them, but I had a good neighbor, the Coulters. She came to me and told me about Arnold & Itkin. I can’t help but thank the Coulters enough. 

It’s turned out to be what I hoped. All along, I have to admit, I’ve been scared of what’s the outcome going to be and all of that. But I could tell I was on the more professional side of it because I was seeing good doctors, and they gave me medicine and done me good. They gave me my operation, and now I know that I did the right thing because if I had been back home, I would have had no resources to do anything for me. I would still be walking around with collapsed vertebrae, and nobody would have known it if it hadn’t been for Arnold & Itkin. 

Working with Arnold & Itkin was the best thing I could have done for myself. I feel like I’m going to be alright now. I’m satisfied.