Shaffer Megyn News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Here are some witnesses describing the chaos before and after that initial explosion. >> i sat down in my family room and just heard this roaring, and it was a boom, boom, a massive explosion. i ran out of the side of my garage, when i looked to my backyard i could see the flames. >> i turned the corner and there was a huge fireball. >> the beds were shaking, like it was almost like an earthquake but more powerful. megyn: the national transportation safety board is now sending in its own team to investigate. trace gallagher picks up the story live from our west coast newsroom, trace. >> report...

here are some witnesses describing the chaos before and after that initial explosion. >> i sat down in my family room and just heard this roaring, and it was a boom, boom, a massive explosion. i ran out of the side of my garage, when i looked to my backyard i could see the flames. >> i turned the corner and there was a huge fireball. >> the beds were shaking, like it was almost like an earthquake but more powerful. megyn: the national transportation safety board is now sending in its own team to investigate. trace gallagher picks up the story live from our west coast newsroom, trace....

2 million miles, and federal law says only 7% of those gas lines have to be inspected. so it's pretty much up to the gas companies to police themselves. the biggest danger of course we see these time and time again, megyn is the big bulldozers and heavy equipment striking these things. the number two threat is corrosion, simply that the lines are made of metal over years and they corrode because of the gas flowing through them. you have to keep in mind that we are talking about gas lines in this neighborhood that are 50-plus years old. even today there are no set back guidelines, they are buil...

A hundred million dollars a year. there are only 94 inspectors. as you look at these live pictures coming in of the devastation you get a better idea of exactly what was happening early last night when this thing actually exploded and how quickly it expanded to the neighborhoods. it wasn't just a straight up flame and the wind pushing it, it was an explosion that was felt for hundreds and hundreds of yards around these neighborhoods. it is very, very staggering to see the pictures today, megyn and to see how much impact this had from one piece of the line bursting and going up in flames. megyn...

Explosion and this natural gas devastation just south of san francisco affects everybody in this country, and here is why. you look at the pictures here, you look at swath and neighborhoods that were destroyed. some homes as you see there burned down and some look like they were totally incinerated there. the gas research institute, megyn tells us it looks like it was a 24-inch pipeline running through that neighborhood that exploded. keep this in mind. that pipeline is pushing a thousand pounds of gas per square inch. it's an immense amount of power. when it blows up it impacts a radius of 66...