Debris from a deadly explosion and fire at The Clyde apartment building is seen behind a fence in Oak Cliff on Wednesday, June 3, 2026, in Dallas. Three people were killed in the May 28 explosion and fire at the apartment building.
Elías Valverde II/The Dallas Morning News
Burned debris from an apartment explosion and fire is pilled up across the street from The East 9th Apartments. Investigators from Dallas Fire-Rescue, NTSB and Atmos Energy inspected The Clyde apartments next door on East 9th St near Patton Avenue in the Oak Cliff area of Dallas, May 30, 2026. The apartment building exploded and burst into flames, Thursday.
Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News
A judge on Monday ordered Atmos Energy to preserve evidence from a deadly Oak Cliff gas explosion, hours after a survivor blamed the utility in court filings of multiple failures leading up to the blast.
The filings, part of a lawsuit first filed in late May, allege the company failed to repair repeated gas leaks, replace an aging plastic pipeline long linked to leaks and explosions and properly mark underground gas lines before drilling was to take place at the site.
In a statement, Atmos disputed that one of the types of pipe material highlighted in the filing as problematic was present at the site, and said it hired a professional line locator to find the gas line before the explosion. The utility did not respond to questions about the restraining order, but had previously said in emails included in court documents that it was abiding by its “preservation obligations.”
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Dallas Fire-Rescue was responding May 28 to a reported gas leak at The Clyde apartments on East 9th Street, near Patton Avenue, when an explosion sparked a fire. Three people died; at least five others were injured. It was Dallas’ deadliest gas-related accident since 2018, when an explosion in northwest Dallas killed a 12-year-old girl.
“The evidence in this case will show that Atmos Energy’s grossly negligent marking of its pipeline in the wrong location, combined with its conscious decision to operate its natural gas distribution system with known leaks — which are, disturbingly, a source of profit to the company — caused this horrific but easily preventable tragedy,” Dallas-based attorney Chris Hamilton wrote in the filing on behalf of Eric Peters, who survived the explosion and is seeking $1 billion in damages.
Investigators have yet to declare what went wrong in Oak Cliff, but the filing alleges and records obtained by The Dallas Morning News show Atmos had repeatedly been notified of gas leaks on the block for more than a year before the explosion. Further, the pipe material cited as faulty in the filing has been the subject of state investigations for decades.
A technical diagram obtained by The News also shows a gas line in the spot where drilling occurred in front of The Clyde, and a photograph in the filing appears to show that the spot was not marked as having an underground gas line.
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The National Transportation Safety Board, the agency leading the investigation into the explosion, is expected to release a preliminary report soon. The agency’s full investigation of the root cause could take more than a year.
Old pipes, new problems
The pipe present at The Clyde, the filing alleges, was an early form of polyethylene gas pipe. The lawsuit suggested the pipes were made of a polyethylene material known as Poly-1, or an even earlier version of it. In its statement, Atmos said the material at The Clyde was not Poly-1. Older polyethylene pipes have long been linked to leaks, explosions and fires, according to a 2004 report from the Railroad Commission of Texas.
A lawsuit filing shows outdated polyethylene gas lines outside The Clyde, photographed on June 11, 2026.
Texas utilities launched several efforts to locate and replace the pipe over the years, efforts regulators found were delayed and incomplete. A fatal explosion in Garland prompted increased oversight in the late 1990s, when state investigators concluded companies knew — or should have known — about the risks for decades and should have removed it much sooner.
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Atmos had numerous opportunities to discover the outdated and leak-prone pipe was present at and near The Clyde, the filing alleges, including replacing the meter at the property two weeks before the explosion.
The gas company repeatedly sent crews to various locations on the 400 block of East 9th Street for gas line repairs. The first ticket cited in the filing came on January 27, 2025: “Emergency-gas repair,” “Gas is blowing.” At least three other repair tickets followed that year.
At The Clyde itself, The News found, an excavator submitted an emergency 811 ticket on behalf of Atmos on March 20, 2026. Contacting Texas811 triggers notification to of phone, electric, cable, gas and other utilities to send out locators to mark lines so digging can occur safely.
“Crew en route, Customers with service, Gas is leaking,” the March ticket stated.
Atmos didn’t submit a response to 811 indicating whether it had gone out to mark lines.
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Over the next two months, the excavator renewed the 811 ticket on Atmos’ behalf every 10 to 12 days. The 811 ticket renewal on May 15 was still in effect the day of the explosion.
If gas was already accumulating underground, that could have caused the explosion on its own, said Robert Hall, a former investigator with the NTSB who now works for the nonprofit Pipeline Safety Trust, an organization that advocates for industry and regulatory reforms. Hall is not involved in the lawsuit.
Hall led the investigation into the 2018 house explosion in West Dallas that killed 12-year-old Linda Rogers while she was getting ready for school. That investigation found a gas pipe began leaking after being damaged more than 20 years earlier, causing gas to accumulate underground. Monday’s filing alleges persistent leaks at The Clyde would have caused natural gas to build up beneath the building.
It’s also possible, Hall said, that the drilling damage to the gas line at The Clyde added enough gas to what was already leaking. Or, the drilling damage alone could have been the cause.
Just before the explosion
At The Clyde, tragedy unfolded in the days after ECS Limited, the engineering consulting firm that was assessing the soil for future construction, contacted 811. A developer set to buy the property and build new housing there had hired ECS for the soil analysis.
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ECS provided four geographic coordinates for drilling, 811 records show. Spots for drilling, experts told The News, are typically chosen based on the future building plans.
The lines were reported to 811 as located, records show.
Still frames from video recorded by the driller on May 28 (center and right), and included in the lawsuit, show marked gas lines on the west side of the building, but none where drilling was to take place.
The locator would likely have begun the job behind The Clyde, industry experts told The News. Google street views captured in the rear alley before the building was destroyed show the gas meter at the back of the building, on the northwest corner.
Line locators responding to an 811 ticket typically mark lines between the neighborhood’s distribution line and the meter for the property.
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The filing alleges faulty line location resulted in a contractor drilling in a location that had not been marked.
Photos included in the suit, identified as taken by the driller, show no marks locating the gas line at the drilling spot.
It’s unclear why the locator allegedly didn’t mark the location of the gas line the driller struck.
More than a decade ago, however, an engineering firm was able to find it, according to a diagram of underground utilities The News obtained from the city’s water department. The firm created the diagram in advance of water and sewer line work underneath 9th Street in front of the building, and included gas line locations.
The News overlaid the diagram on an overhead Google Maps image of The Clyde. The line that branches toward the Clyde points directly to one of the spots ECS Limited had indicated it wanted to drill — the same spot where ECS reported that the excavator, Barba Drilling, hit the line.
“There is a clear mark that there is a gas line there,” said Sahadat Hossain, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Texas Arlington who reviewed the diagram. “They should not have drilled there, simple.”
It’s unclear whether ECS, the line locator or Barba Drilling knew of the city map. Barba and ECS did not respond to requests for comment.
More leaks reported after explosion
Peters, who lived on the second floor of The Clyde, lost consciousness after the initial blast and woke up on the ground floor covered in rubble and bleeding from a head injury, Hamilton said. Peters crawled from the rubble and as he got away, saw what he described as a second wave of fire engulf the building, Hamilton said.
After the explosion, Atmos again reported emergency gas leak repairs on blocks close to The Clyde.
Atmos’ website also indicates it now has a project in progress on the same street as The Clyde, to install natural gas facilities. The filing alleges the work is Atmos “scrambling” to replace other old pipes in the area.
Atmos did not answer questions about the prior gas leaks or new work in the area, but said it is “continuing to support the National Transportation Safety Board and other authorities to ensure a thorough investigation. The safety of our communities and employees is our first priority. Our hearts go out to the people who were lost, their families, and everyone who has been impacted.”
On Monday, the lot where The Clyde once stood remained fenced off. Workers in reflective vests moved between parked vehicles along East Ninth Street. A security guard sat in a nearby sedan.
Yellow Atmos Energy utility flags tracing the buried gas line in front of the complex stretched much of the block. Recently poured sections of sidewalk at either end sat beside yellow gas utility lids that appeared newly installed.
Hamilton said attorneys now plan to seek expedited inspection and testing of a disconnected portion of the service line that served the apartment building. The attorney, who said his firm represents nearly 2 dozen people impacted by the explosion, said he expects more residents and victims to join the suit in coming weeks.
Staff writer Chase Rogers contributed to this report.