Feds Place Blame For Deadly Minnehaha Academy Explosion

MINNEAPOLIS — The National Transportation Safety Board says that mistakes made by undertrained contract workers is to blame for the deadly Aug. 2, 2017 gas explosion at Minnehaha Academy. The blast killed two staff members, injured nine others and sent the school community into shock and grief.

"The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the natural gas explosion at the Minnehaha Academy occurred when a pipefitting crew disassembled piping upstream of a gas service meter," the federal agency stated in its final 10-page accident report, released Tuesday.

"Contributing to the accident was the lack of detailed documentation that clearly established the scope of work to be performed."

Master Mechanical, Inc. (MMI) was the contractor hired by CenterPoint Energy Minnesota Gas to perform the pipefitting work at the school. Based in Eagan, MMI has about 125 employees, NTSB said.

The two-person MMI on-site work crew consisted of a field foreman and a construction helper. The field foreman was the father of the construction helper, according to the NTSB report.

NTSB determined that foreman working on the school's gas pipes and gas service meter before the explosion "had not completed" the required qualifications program "to work on the covered tasks associated with jurisdictional piping."

Additionally, the construction helper who was working on the gas piping right before the explosion "was a part-time employee" that "was not trained to any pipefitter job classification level," NTSB wrote.

The blast killed Ruth Berg and John Carlson.

Berg had worked for Minnehaha Academy for 17 years. Carlson graduated from Minnehaha Academy in 1953. He then sent his kids there, and later came back to work at the school after retiring from his first career.

You can donate to the Minnehaha Memorial fund here (via GoFundMe).

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