Are gas pipes in your home safe in storm?

Ross and Meg Rushing were entertaining a friend at their brand-new home in Lubbock, Texas, on Aug. 24, 2012, when a clap of thunder appeared to set off their burglar alarm.

Unable to turn it off, Ross Rushing and his friend, Brennen Teel, went to the garage to get a ladder so they could disable the system.

Thats when the explosion happened, Rushing recalled. Honestly, I thought I was dead immediately.

Rushing was able to climb out from under the buckled garage door, but couldnt locate Teel in the thick black smoke that was now pouring from the home.

Firefighters later found his body at the rear of the garage. Investigators believe he opened the drop-down attic staircase, not realizing the attic was ablaze. Oxygen rushed in, causing a back-draft explosion that killed the 31-year-old Teel, a resident of Heath, Texas, they said.

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What eats away at Teels family is not just the seeming randomness of his death. It is the fire marshals determination that the fire that triggered the explosion started when a bolt of lightning sent electricity coursing into the home, burning tiny holes in the yellow corrugated stainless steel pipes supplying natural gas to appliances and heaters in the rest of the house. And it is the fact that, as they later learned, some fire experts have been warning for years that the piping poses a hazard when lightning strikes nearby.

I would not wish this on anybody anybody, said Teels father, Ken, who with his wife, Becky, is suing the manufacturer of the pipe. Its been a nightmare.

Meg and Ross Rushing escaped the fire that destroyed their home in Lubbock, Texas. But their friend, Brennen Teel, above, who had been visiting for the night did not. He died in the couple's garage in a fire and explosion allegedly caused by the failure of flexible piping carrying natural gas following a lightning strike.

Teels death highlights an ongoing debate over the safety of the piping known as corrugated stainless steel tubing, or CSST which has been installed in as many as 10 million U.S. homes since the 1990s, according to some manufacturers estimates. Its use is approved in building codes around the nation, though no longer in Lubbock, where the city issued a moratorium on its use in the wake of Teels death.

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Are gas pipes in your home safe in storm?