Fuel Leak

A fuel leak in one of the Conyngham's boiler rooms touched off the fatal fire that sent smoke and flames racing through the guided-missile destroyer, the ship's skipper said. Cmdr. William R. Williams told reporters at a news conference at the Norfolk Naval Station in Virginia that he feared he might lose his ship and had small boats in the water in case it had to be abandoned. "But when I saw the determination of the faces of my men, all those thoughts left my mind," he said.

A South African Airways Boeing 737 jet bound for Cape Town had to turn back to Johannesburg's Jan Smuts Aiport last week after passengers spotted fuel gushing from a wing, the airline said on Friday. South African Airways spokeswoman Aletta van Jaarsveld said that after the plane had landed safely, technicians found that a seal on a fuel tank cap had broken.

A faulty valve is being blamed for a fuel leak that released an unknown quantity of gasoline into the soil, possibly under several homes, near the Defense Department fuel depot in Norwalk, city officials said. The leak, which was discovered last Thursday and repaired by Sunday, has not contaminated any drinking water nor posed other health risks, said Daniel E. Keen, deputy city manager.

The hydrogen leaks crippling space shuttles Atlantis and Columbia appear to be in different places, ruling out the possibility that the problems are related, NASA said Friday. "The things that we know leak on one we know aren't leaking on the other," said William Lenoir, head of NASA's space flight program. A common problem with the shuttles' fuel system would have been much more difficult to deal with, said shuttle director Robert Crippen.

A federal panel investigating the disappearance of NASA's Mars Observer space probe concluded Wednesday that the spacecraft leaked enough fuel--barely two tablespoonfuls--to cause an explosion, knocking the first U.S. mission to Mars in 17 years out of contact with Earth. The panel of NASA-appointed experts, which has conducted an exhaustive review of the project since the spacecraft vanished Aug.

Almost 25% of DaimlerChrysler's 2002 model Dodge and Chrysler minivans are being recalled because of a possible fuel leak, the company said Tuesday. General Motors Corp. also is calling back more than half a million sport utility vehicles to add a device to keep fingers from being pinched in the folding seats. The minivan recall involves 145,000 Dodge Grand Caravan and Chrysler Town & Country models built at Chrysler's Windsor, Canada, plant from Sept. 1, 2001, through March 11.

State water quality regulators fined Chevron Corp. $2.25 million Wednesday for a pipeline leak that released millions of gallons of jet fuel into the ground water beneath the company's El Segundo refinery. The penalty is the second largest in the history of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, which enforces state and federal water quality standards in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. From early 1998 to February 1999, about 4.

Another Boeing 787 Dreamliner operated by Japan Airlines encountered a problem at Boston's Logan International Airport, just one day after a fire erupted on a different Dreamliner parked at a gate. About 12:25 p.m. EST Tuesday, a Japan Airlines Dreamliner headed to Tokyo was taxiing to the runway for takeoff when a fuel leak forced it to return to the terminal. Japan Airlines, or JAL, did not immediately provide any information on the incident. A person on the scene said the leak dumped about 40 gallons of fuel on the taxiway.

"Snakebit" NASA engineers, beset by a launch pad fuel leak and pump trouble, were forced to delay a practice countdown for the shuttle Discovery today until Monday, pushing a key main engine test-firing to Thursday--five days behind schedule. "It was one of those 'it wasn't our kind of night' kind of days," said launch director Robert Sieck.