A federal investigation is blaming inadequate work by an excavation crew for a pipeline explosion that killed two people in Alabama and slowed the flow of fuel to the Eastern Seaboard in 2016.
A report released Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board says excavators used heavy machinery to dig up a Colonial Pipeline pipe when the work should have been done by hand. It says a machine hit a fitting on the pipeline, unleashing gasoline and starting a blaze that killed two people and hurt four others.
Relatives of a worker who died in the blast filed suit over his death in September.