Beneath the North Texas Dirt

An investigative reporter with a Dallas television station figures out what�s behind a series of deadly house explosions.

Friday, December 5, 2008:
For WFAA investigative reporter Brett Shipp, reporting is in his DNA. Watch the web-exclusive video.

November 21, 2008:
This week on Expos�©: a new episode online and on Bill Moyers Journal (check local listings). A series of fatal house explosions strike neighborhoods in North Texas. An investigative reporter looks for answers and asks if regulators ignored repeated warnings going back decades that put thousands of lives at risk. Brett Shipp, television reporter from Dallas-Fort Worth's WFAA, traces the trouble to a piece of aging equipment that connects homeowners' gaslines to their gas meters. But he also finds evidence suggesting that state regulators and local power companies ignored this fatal problem - one that potentially lurks underneath hundreds of thousands of homes. This report is part of Blueprint America, a PBS-wide series examining the fragile state of the nation's infrastructure.

Watch Brett Shipp's Peabody Award-winning original reporting.  Read responses from the gas company at the center of the inquiry into the explosions as well as from the state regulator charged with ensuring the safety of the public. For more stories from Blueprint America - including web-exclusive video from another local Texas television reporter on the trail of a natural gas pipeline explosion - visit their Web site.