The city's preliminary finding, as Gazeta.uz carried it at 13:35, is specific. At 219 millimetres across, the pipe had several through-holes in one section, and the leak area comes to about 375 square centimetres, a patch 15 by 25. The gas gathered in a chamber of the heating network in Yakkasaray district and went off under the road. One person was injured, several cars were damaged, and a criminal case has been opened.
Thursday's statements read differently. Veolia Energy Tashkent, speaking for the heating networks, said its pipes were intact and undamaged, that the line laid this year stood empty, without water or pressure, and that the incident was not connected with the operation or a rupture of the heating networks. The heat, water and gas suppliers together told Gazeta.uz the event was not connected with the networks. The district administration said the causes were being established and that the new pipes had been tested for strength but had not been put into operation.
One operator's chamber became the vessel for the other's leak, and each spoke for its own network first.
Nothing in Friday's finding contradicts Veolia on its own pipes. Gas came from the gas main; the chamber only held it. The contradiction sits with the gas supplier, one of the three that had cleared their networks the day before, and with the sequence, in which three utilities ruled themselves out before anyone had ruled anything in.
What matters is the chamber. The heating line under Glinka Street was laid this year and, by both Veolia and the district, tested but not yet in service; the gas main beside it, by the city's finding, is holed in several places. One operator's chamber became the vessel for the other's leak, and each spoke for its own network first.
What the criminal case is for is not yet said. Nuz.uz quotes the city that law enforcement will give a legal assessment of the actions of those responsible; the article of the code is not named, and neither the prosecutor's office nor the emergencies ministry has issued a statement of its own in the reads. Tashkent has one injured person, a hole in a street and, since Friday, a named cause.