Corrugated stainless steel gas tubing lightning strike fires

Physical demonstration of the lightning-perforation failure. Six billion feet installed in US homes; manufacturing flaw + high-voltage discharge → perforation of the steel through the plastic jacket.

[Tom holds up a piece of corrugated stainless steel tubing.] This is corrugated stainless steel tubing. There's about six billion feet of this in the United States, through many people's homes — in the newer homes and as replacement in older homes. It's got polyethylene — this particular product has a yellow plastic jacket. It's not really supposed to be for insulation. The yellow is supposed to identify it for gas piping. There's another company that's made little connectors like this for forty or fifty years and they paint them yellow.