Fuel Tanks

Regulators are requiring U.S. airlines to modify fuel tanks to cut the risk of explosions such as the 1996 blast that downed TWA Flight 800. Complying with the new rule will cost about $1 billion over 35 years, said Robert Sturgell, acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration. His estimate covers 2,730 passenger planes affected by the rule as well as new models. The FAA is trying to prevent a repeat of the TWA disaster off New York's Long Island and three others since 1989 that resulted in the deaths of 346 people.

Something was wrong with Sally Ann. ? For months, she sputtered and choked, and Barry Treahy's remedies weren't working. He kept changing her fuel filters. Then he rebuilt her carburetor. Finally, he cut into her gas tank, cleaned out the mysterious caramel-colored gunk and patched her up -- twice.? Disaster struck on a summer day in San Diego, when Treahy's beloved 20-foot fishing boat was parked street side with the outer hull plug open to drain any residual water.

Dale Fortin is getting a new kind of customer at his Detroit auto repair shop, customers who have not just been in a fender-bender or had a windshield smashed by a rock. The soaring price of crude oil has turned gasoline tanks into a cache of valuable booty, and Fortin has replaced several tanks punctured or drilled by thieves thirsting for the nearly $4-a-gallon fuel inside. "That's the new fad," he said. "I'd never seen it before gas got up this high."

Two workers were injured Wednesday in an industrial tank explosion in Kern County, authorities said. The blast occurred shortly before noon during a welding operation at a cluster of crude oil tanks in an almond orchard outside Bakersfield, said Kern County Fire Department Engineer Derek Tisinger. The victims suffered burns but the extent was not immediately known, Tisinger said. One man was flown to Kern Medical Center, and the other was taken by ambulance to Mercy Southwest Hospital.

State and local prosecutors announced Tuesday that AT&T California was paying up to $25 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that the telecommunications company repeatedly failed to test and repair hundreds of underground fuel tanks in California. State Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer said at a news conference that the settlement was the nation's second largest related to violations of underground storage tank laws.

A decade after a Paris-bound jumbo jet exploded in the night sky and plummeted into waters off Long Island's south shore, killing all 230 aboard, the airline industry and federal officials still are strikingly at odds over measures that safety experts say would have prevented the accident. Trans World Airlines Flight 800 crashed minutes after takeoff from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport after a spark ignited vapors in a fuel tank in the center of the Boeing 747's wing.

Fifteen black and Latino airport workers in Dallas who alleged that white co-workers intimidated them with swastikas, nooses and other racist symbols have settled a lawsuit for nearly $1.9 million, their lawyer and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced Tuesday. In addition, Allied Aviation Services -- a New York-based firm that employs about 3,000 workers to fuel airplanes at more than 20 airports -- will institute tough guidelines against racial discrimination and take steps to fire workers who taunt colleagues in the future, officials said.

First it was police cruisers. Now it's stretch limousines. Ford Motor Co. is offering a free safety upgrade to owners of Lincoln Town Car stretch limos: gas tank shields to reduce the risk of fires in high speed, rear-end crashes. The move comes as Ford prepares to defend a wrongful-death case involving a fire that killed three North Carolina sisters in a Town Car stretch limo.

Fire crews were preparing today to use foam to extinguish a massive blaze at a fuel depot north of London after a wave of explosions ripped through the facility and injured 43 people. Authorities said the blasts Sunday morning appeared to be accidental, though they came just four days after an Al Qaeda video appeared on the Internet calling for attacks on facilities carrying oil "stolen" from Muslims in the Middle East.

NASA plans to change the space shuttle's external fuel tank again, this time removing a troublesome section of protective foam that broke off during the launch of Discovery in July, agency officials said Thursday. The removal of more foam from the tank and further testing to find the cause of cracks in the foam could lead to a longer delay until the next shuttle flight, tentatively set for May.