Perilous gas leak quickly contained
Staff writer
Potential disaster was averted Thursday after a machine boring to install fiberoptic cable hit an unmarked gas service line, ripping it away from a gas main.
“Ooh, lots and lots of gas was escaping,” Marion Fire Chief Chris Killough said. “Fumes in the area were bad, bad, bad.”
The concentration of gas at the source of the leak never got to an explosive level, Killough said, but he worried that gas might seep along service lines into homes in the area, midway into the 200 block of S. Lincoln St. in Marion.
At least two families were urged to evacuate.
Notified by the cable installers, Atmos Energy workers already had evacuated one family before Marion firefighters arrived.
“I knew it was going to be significant when Atmos called us for help,” Killough said, “but I didn’t know how bad it was going to be.”
For routine leaks — after a vehicle runs into a gas meter, for example — firefighters typically are the first to respond, and they notify Atmos.
This time, the crew installing Internet cable for service provider IdeaTek called Atmos first, and Atmos sought firefighters’ help.
The call came in at 2:41 p.m.
Firefighters quickly donned breathing apparatus and dug down to the source of the leak, allowing the gas to safely vent into the air instead of pooling and following service lines into homes.
“I saw a family with a bunch of kids down the street,” Killough said. “I told them they probably should leave.”
He called Marcy Hostetler, the county’s emergency manager. She arranged for the ballroom at Marion Community Center to be opened in case evacuees needed shelter in dreary, 45-degree weather.
“Somebody somewhere made a mistake,” Killough said.
The gas main, more than four feet from where the Ideatek contractors had been digging, was well and properly marked, Killough said.
There was no indication, however, of a service line being in the area.
“This was well away from the main,” he said, “but the service line was not marked.”
It’s unclear exactly whose responsibility marking that line might have been.
“Atmos did a great job,” Killough said. “So did the people digging to put in cable.”
Firefighters remained on the scene until 4:56 p.m.
“We were there at least two hours,” Killough said, “but when we left, everyone’s service had been restored.”
Other crews continued to work in the area in mucky weather Friday afternoon, probing for other pipes as IdeaTek’s boring to install fiberoptic cables was poised to continue.
Marion police were called to the leak but quickly were called away to deal with a disturbance elsewhere in town.
Marion ambulance was not available as it was transporting to a Newton hospital a woman who was having trouble breathing at a residence at Marion County Lake.