Hutchinson ? ONEOK workers reported pressure drops in underground storage fields in the days before deadly natural gas explosions leveled two businesses and destroyed a trailer park, court records show.

More than 143 million cubic feet of natural gas is believed to have leaked from a salt cavern at the Yaggy gas storage field seven miles northwest of Hutchinson. That gas eventually erupted from old brine wells beneath the city, causing gas geysers and the blasts that killed John and Mary Ann Hahn.

The couple’s heirs have filed a wrongful-death lawsuit in Sedgwick County District Court against ONEOK, Kansas Gas Service and Mid-Continent Market Center. It alleges, among other things, that the pressure drops should have tipped workers off that something was wrong.

According to Sedgwick County District Court files, ONEOK’s chief controller, Vic Blair, and controllers Mick Heller, Ron Bonilla and Lyle Mehl told ONEOK gas control manager Steve Luthye they had noticed varying degrees of pressure problems in the pod that included the cavern that the gas is thought to have leaked from.

Luthye interviewed the four men on Jan. 19, 2001, a day after the second of two gas explosions in Hutchinson.

Heller had noticed Pod No. 1 was above the maximum allowed operating pressure when he reported for work on Sunday morning, Jan. 14, Luthye wrote in his report.

Blair told Heller that he thought the pressure would settle back down when the field was closed, Luthye said in his report. The pressure did drop after the field was closed.

“By the time Vic relieved him Sunday evening, the pressure had dropped approximately 10 psig (pounds per square inch gauged) and he commented to Vic that it had been dropping all day and he didn’t quite understand that because normally it would stabilize and stop,” Luthye wrote.

Mehl also noted problems, Luthye wrote, but not until after the field was closed at 11 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2001 minutes after the downtown explosion.