Riverside residents were evacuated from their homes Saturday following a gas leak coming from beside a house.
At 2:47 p.m., the St. Albert Fire Department received several calls from homeowners on Red Fox Way reporting a deafening noise thundering through the community. When emergency responders arrived on scene at 2:55 p.m., they immediately knew it was a gas leak.
“It was extremely loud – like a half a block away it was still hard to talk because the gas leak was so loud,” said Charles Tye, platoon chief of the St. Albert Fire Department.
“The escaping gas coming out of the ground from the hole, it almost sounds like you’re standing beside a freight train as it’s going by – it’s that loud.”
The gas leak was caused by excavation equipment digging into the ground next to a home on Red Fox Way. At about 3 p.m. fire department personnel evacuated residents from about 10 homes near the leak.
Tye said the residents were sheltered in a transit bus about a block away, upwind from the gas leak. The fire department provided pizza, doughnuts, coffee and water for homeowners to munch on while they waited.
There were 17 fire department personnel on scene, six RCMP patrol cars containing the area and five ATCO service trucks. Construction crews also helped fix the leak.
In order to shut off the leak, construction crews helped personnel dig a large hole across the street to access the pipe. Tye said they had to dig by hand, since using any equipment could have created problems.
“You can’t use any construction equipment. It can cause an emission source,” he said.
Underground power lines also had to be identified and marked before they could break any ground.
It took just under two hours from the time they arrived to clamp and shut off the pipe. During the evacuation the fire department set up ventilation systems in nearby empty homes to make sure any gas that wafted in through open windows would evaporate. Tye said normally gas would have evaporated into the air, but the strong winds were blowing it into the sides of homes.
By 4:43 p.m. residents were allowed to re-enter their properties. Tye said about 40 houses in Riverside were out of gas for the rest of the day, which ATCO employees worked to fix throughout the evening.
More information to come.
