Big infrastructure failures attract attention but USA Today finds that millions of Americans live near aging gas lines:

About every other day over the past decade, a gas leak in the United States has destroyed property, hurt someone or killed someone, a USA TODAY Network investigation finds. The most destructive blasts have killed at least 135 people, injured 600 and caused $2 billion in damages since 2004…

A review of federal data shows there are tens of thousands of miles of cast-iron and bare-steel gas mains lurking beneath American cities and towns — despite these pipes being a longtime target of National Transportation Safety Board accident investigators, government regulators and safety advocates.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has been pushing gas utilities for more than a decade to replace aging pipes with more resilient materials like plastic, though it’s not required by law. The industry has responded by replacing thousands of miles of pipe, but a daunting amount remains. It can cost $1 million per mile, or more, to replace aging pipe, costs typically passed to customers…

Aging pipes are a high-risk example of the nation’s struggle to replace its crumbling infrastructure, a danger hidden beneath the ground until a pipe fails or is struck by something and a spark ignites a monstrous blast. Natural gas is piped into 67 million homes and at least 5 million businesses, schools and other buildings across the country, with gas distribution and service lines snaking beneath most neighborhoods in American cities.

A long and fascinating look at how gas is delivered to many homes and places underground.

Perhaps the relative lack of outcry regarding this issue is because the events take place at seemingly random times in different places. In other words, a large-scale explosion might draw more attention than the scattered events that do take place. The costs of fixing this are quite high yet given the typical levels of concern about safety, it seems like this will need to happen at some point.