Gas well blaze draws response from firefighters, HAZMAT team
LUZERNE TWP. – Flames shot more than 30 feet into the air for more than five hours Saturday when a newly dug gas well ignited near the intersection of Heistersburg and Arensburg roads, drawing a response from local fire departments and the Fayette County Emergency Management Hazardous Materials team. The initial call was placed to Fayette County 911 around 11:15 a.m. by a resident, though there were reports at the scene that the fire began around 10:30 a.m. and was called in to 911 by the drilling crew.
“It’s our understanding that upon completing the drilling of the well, upon removing their equipment they had a flare-up,” said Scott Dolan, a Fayette County HAZMAT deputy.
Wendell Rollison Jr. and his son live on Heistersburg Road about three-quarters of a mile from the fire. They were walking to Republic on Saturday morning and spotted the fire.
“We came walking through here around 10:15 or 10:30 and it was burning then,” Rollison said. “There were trucks all up there.”
Jay Bilker, a driller from Yost Drilling in Mount Morris, said the fire was ignited accidentally.
“We brought a truck up to remove the blowout preventer from the well, and it sucked the gas in and caused the engine to backfire and ignited the well,” said Bilker.
Bilker said the blowout preventer is used during the well digging to prevent explosions. It was being moved to the next well site, farther down Arensburg Road, when the accident occurred.
“We drill hundreds of wells a year and never have had a fire,” said Ron Sickles of McClellandtown who works for Atlas America, the company that owns the well.
The Isabella Volunteer Fire Department was first on the scene, with LaBelle, Tower Hill and South Brownsville crews assisting, along with Hiller EMS and Fayette EMS ambulance services. Heistersburg and Arensburg roads were closed for about 41/2 hours as a precaution and to protect the fire crews, Dolan said. The actual job of extinguishing the fire fell to the drilling company and gas company.
Around 2:25 p.m. a truck carrying liquid nitrogen, which was used to extinguish the blaze, arrived on the scene.
“They are pumping in a nitrogen blanket. It’s an inert gas. That cuts the oxygen off and puts the fire out and the fire companies will keep the area cool, so they can cap it. The dangerous part is between getting the fire out and getting it capped,” said Dick Oglevee, assistant chief of Fayette County HAZMAT.
“The risk right now is re-ignition. As (the gas) is coming out of the well, there is no smell.”
Within a few minutes of pumping the nitrogen, crews had extinguished the blaze and capped the well.
Mercaptin, the odor people generally associate with natural gas, is added to natural gas at the transmission plants, Dolan said. Detectors were used to make sure no gas was leaking into the air from the capped well.
The HAZMAT crews left the scene shortly after 4 p.m., with the local fire departments remaining for a short time after to clean up the area.