Gas spill: More than 100,000 gallons leak from pipeline

A 116,760-gallon gas leak, caused by an under­ground gas trans­mis­sion line, forced the evac­u­a­tion of 70 res­i­dents from their homes dur­ing icy win­ter con­di­tions early last Friday.

At approx­i­mately 10:45 p.m. last Thurs­day, res­i­dents of Brook­side Mobile Home Park, 706 N. Main St., called the Welling­ton Fire Dis­trict after smelling gas.

Fire­fight­ers responded, and deter­mined the smell was caused by a break in an 8-inch gas pipeline that runs under Welling­ton from Toledo to Allegheny.

The leak occurred under the Welling­ton Town­ship garage park­ing area, located at 105 Maple St.

Sev­eral agen­cies were called to the scene, and mem­bers of the fire dis­trict did their best to con­tain the leak.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Sunoco Logis­tics, the Ohio EPA, and U.S. EPA are han­dling the cleanup. Also called to the scene was the Lorain County haz­mat team, Lorain County Office of Emer­gency Man­age­ment, and the Spencer and Ober­lin fire departments.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives with Sunoco Logis­tics, the owner of the pipeline, said about 116,760 gal­lons of gas leaked from the pipe.

A total of 30 homes had to be evac­u­ated. While the major­ity of the homes evac­u­ated were at the mobile home park, two houses on Peck-Wadsworth and one house on Main Street also had to be evacuated.

A tem­po­rary shel­ter was set up at the Town Hall by the Red Cross.

While most evac­uees are stay­ing with their fam­i­lies, Sunoco Logis­tics has agreed to pay for them to stay else­where until they can return to their homes. Those that were evac­u­ated were able to stay at the Motel 6 in Amherst, the Ober­lin Inn, or the Elms in Wellington.

On Mon­day, the dif­fer­ent agen­cies hosted a brief­ing at Welling­ton High School.

Jeff Lip­pert, on-scene coor­di­na­tor for the U.S. EPA, praised the Welling­ton Fire Dis­trict for their efforts.

“They were fast to the scene,” he said. “I’ve never seen a local response like it. They saved the day. The cleanup of this could’ve lasted weeks, but because of the local efforts, it will be cleaned up in a cou­ple of weeks.”

Lip­pert said the EPA has been col­lect­ing air sam­ples, and will not allow res­i­dents to return until the air is safe to breathe.

“We want the envi­ron­ment cleaned up and the air­ways to be safe for peo­ple,” he said.

Lip­pert said the safe level of gas peo­ple can breathe is six parts per bil­lion. How­ever, some sam­ples they’ve tested have gas lev­els of 65 parts per billion.

In order to make the air safe, all the spilled gas and con­t­a­m­i­nated soil has to be removed from the scene.

When the gas leaked, it spilled into the White Ditch, accord­ing to Lippert.

“We’re con­duct­ing 24-hour vac­uum truck oper­a­tions to recover the gas from White Ditch,” he said.

Lip­pert said the recov­ered gas and con­t­a­m­i­nated soil is being trans­ported off-site and dis­posed of properly.

Many res­i­dents have com­plained about the strong odor the leak has caused. Lip­pert said remov­ing the soil will help.

“The source of the vapors will sig­nif­i­cantly decrease once the soil has been removed,” he said.

As of Mon­day, Lip­pert said 500 cubic yards of soil had been removed from the site. Addi­tion­ally, 160,137 gal­lons of gas and water had been removed.

David Justin, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Sunoco Logis­tics, said the com­pany has not deter­mined the cause of the pipeline break yet.

Justin said Sunoco will have the failed pipe ana­lyzed to help deter­mine how the leak occurred.

“Right now, our con­cern is the clean-up and get­ting peo­ple back in their homes,” he said.

The pipeline, which was installed in 1952, had never failed before, accord­ing to Justin.

Justin said the pipelines are inspected every five years. He said this par­tic­u­lar pipeline was last inspected in 2007, and was sched­uled to be inspected again next month.

Lip­pert and Justin said they under­stand res­i­dents are frus­trated, but they need to make sure every­one will be safe.

“We don’t want any­one to have adverse health issues,” Lip­pert said.

Welling­ton fire chief Mike Wether­bee, who had just com­pleted his first full week as the new chief, said he feels for the residents.

“We under­stand their con­cerns,” he said. “I’ve said this many times over, that the health and well-being of the res­i­dents is our top con­cern. It’s dis­heart­en­ing to me to tell some­one they can’t go home yet, but we need to make sure it’s safe before send­ing them home.”

Wether­bee said all the dif­fer­ent per­son­nel have worked well together. There have been 83 response per­son­nel on scene.

“Every­one has worked together fan­tas­ti­cally,” he said. “Every­one is com­ing together the way they should.”

As of Mon­day, it was not yet known when res­i­dents would be able to return to their homes.

Posted by Terra Carlson on Jan 19 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.