Greene county communities lose natural gas service
Natural gas service was disrupted to over 1,600 Columbia Gas customers in the Rices Landing, Carmichaels and Dry Tavern areas Monday evening. The outage was caused by a low pressure problem on the Columbia distribution line feeding into the Greene County towns.
While the exact cause of the outage was not known, most of the effort from Columbia Gas workers has been to reestablish service to customers, Columbia Gas spokesperson Rob Boulware said.
Sixteen to 20 people are working around-the-clock to reestablish service to customers, who, Boulware said, use natural gas for cooking and other purposes.
A natural gas outage is very rare; however, Columbia Gas of Pennsylvania maintains emergency response plans to handle and staff outages this size.
Boulware said the first phase of the repair – to isolate and bypass the affected area – is over. The next stage, purging the lines to let the air out and the gas back in, began at 10 p.m. Tuesday.
When purging, there will be an odor of natural gas in the open air. If a customer smells natural gas in their home, they are recommended to leave immediately, to not turn on or off any electric appliance and to immediately contact Columbia Gas from another location.
The final stage – re-lighting the pilots for each affected customer – began at 11 p.m. Tuesday and will until each customer’s service is restored.
Re-lighting requires contact with the homeowners, so, depending on availability of customers to allow access into their homes, the estimated time for restoring service to the majority of the affected customers is about two days.
“To re-light the pilot, we have to physically go to each appliance,” Boulware said. “I had customers in the dead of winter who did not leave their homes, so we expect these people to stay put.”
Boulware emphasized that the customers should not try to reestablish their service.
“They need to wait for Columbia Gas to come around,” he said. “It’s a drawn out process, but we’re getting it done with the customers in mind first.”
To aid in the re-light process, customers can either leave a note on their door indicating where they can be reached or call Columbia Gas at 888-460-4332 to leave contact information, Boulware added.