The approximate location of the explosion is indicated by the star in the figure above. Eleven nearby campers, including five children, were killed by the blast and fire. The people camped near the pipeline may have been unaware of its exact location because it was buried 15 feet underground, although the pipeline emerged from the ground to cross the Pecos river at a nearby bridge. The cause of the explosion is currently being investigated by El Paso Natural Gas and the National Transportation Safety Board Three groups of seismometers were deployed at the time of this explosion. The signal is very subtle or not visible at the Socorro stations.
All clear signals are due to sound waves propagating in the atmosphere.
The pressure variations in these sound waves cause elastic motion near the Earth's surface which is sensed by seismic instrumentation. The x axis shows time in seconds, and the y axis is proportional to ground velocity. The data are consistent with at least three significant separate explosions occurring within a time span of approximately 40 seconds, the first being much smaller than the subsequent two. Other smaller explosion events are also visible later in the recording. This seismogram shows the blast recorded at the nearest permanent Carlsbad station.