Interesting story from this website comment –
Here’s how the Kansas State Geological Survey found the gas pockets in Hutchinson, Kansas in 2001:
Hutchinson, Kansas: A Geologic Detective Story
by M. Lee Allison
Everyone in downtown Hutchinson, a city of 40,000 in central Kansas, heard or felt the natural gas explosion Wednesday morning, Jan. 17.
City Manager Joe Palacioz was meeting with his department heads at City Hall, four blocks away, when they heard the blast and felt the shock wave shake the building. The fire and police chiefs rushed towards the sound of the explosion. Palacioz headed to the city’s emergency operations center and would stay there for many days as the crisis unfolded.
This sudden release of natural gas burst from the ground under Woody’s Appliance store and the adjacent Décor Shop, blowing out windows in nearby buildings. Customers and workers staggered out into the street from both stores, remarkably only shaken and dazed. Within minutes, the two businesses were ablaze.
. . . Eight miles northwest of Hutchinson on Wednesday morning, technicians at the Yaggy underground natural gas storage field saw a dramatic drop in pressure in one underground, manmade salt cavern or “jug” that they had been filling with natural gas.
ALSO –
A group concerned about Lake Peigneur has this to say about the Kansas disaster :
The main area of risk is the structural integrity of the caverns. Although Inergy claims they are sound, previous analyses show significant problems that could lead to the migration of volatile gas out of the caverns, a not-uncommon occurrence among similar storage facilities in other areas of the U.S.
The migration risk could pose problems for communities miles away from the site, as illustrated by the Yaggy gas storage facility disaster that hit the city of Hutchinson, Kansas in 2001. Though eight miles from the Yaggy site, on January 17 of that year, downtown Hutchinson was rocked by natural gas exploding up from the ground, destroying two buildings.
Later on the 17th, “geyser-like fountains of natural gas and brine” as high as 30 feet appeared a few miles east of the first explosion, and on the 18th, natural gas exploded under a mobile home, resulting in two deaths.
Though at first glance it might seem highly improbable for natural gas to travel so far underground, the Kansas Geological Survey revealed potential pathways through rock formations, helped along by a “fist-sized” hole in a pipe casing and other infrastructure issues at the Yaggy facility.
The Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle 