Sunday’s wet weather made a gas leak all the more dangerous after a falling tree cracked a utility line mid-afternoon.
Gladewater Fire Chief Tim Basham suspects the weather’s to blame on all counts.
“A giant oak tree evidently blew over, fell, sheared the bolts and opened the line,” he recounted. “It was high pressure. It was ripping.”
The street is sparsely populated, but a nearby homeowner spotted the threated and called in the incident. GFD responded to the scene about 3 p.m. and personnel were soon evacuating residents from two homes as a roiling, dense cloud grew.
“That white fog you see ain’t a mist. That’s pure-D rotten natural gas. It was bad,” Basham said. “What happens in a natural gas leak, when it’s not real humid, the gas just leaves town. It goes straight up into the atmosphere because gas is lighter than air.”
That wasn’t the case considering July 12’s stormy conditions.
“When you have moisture, the gas behaves differently. It absorbs the moisture, and it’ll drop,” Basham explained. “That’s big time danger.
“It was a large volume of gas being let loose. It was loud. It was a pretty sticky deal.”
GFD controlled the scene as a repair crew was dispatched by the controlling utility.
“It took them for hours to get it under control,” Basham said. Fortunately, that was the end of it: “No harm, no foul. They came, got it cut-off and repaired and everybody’s good.”
[Courtesy photo from Gladewater Fire Department]