Major gas leak quickly resolved

BY RYAN FAUGHNDER
DAILY SOUND CORRESPONDENT

A potential disaster was quickly averted yesterday after heavy construction equipment severed a major gas pipe, allowing the highly flammable vapor to blast geyser-like into the air. Fire and hazmat teams responded quickly to the leak at Yanonali and Bath St., and controlled the situation in 80 minutes.
The two-inch gas line was pushing natural gas at 40 pounds per square inch when the crew’s backhoe, the jointed mechanical arm used for digging, snapped the pipe the during an excavation project. The accident was reported at 3:15 p.m.

Three fire engines and one truck responded to the accident, along with two response crews from the gas company. No one was injured.
Battalion Chief Chris Blair of the Santa Barbara Fire Department said this was a major leak and that the resulting odor was severely potent even at over two blocks away. Furthermore, he said, the firefighters had to block the nearby roads, causing traffic congestion at a particularly busy time of day.
“It was quite loud, so we had to isolate the area, and there was 40 psi of gas shooting through that pipe, so we told all the neighbors to close their doors,” he said. “It was flowing a lot of gas.”
Emergency responders dug underground and used hydraulic clamps to stop the flow of gas, and – because the pipe operated on a loop system – they applied clamps in two locations. The first clamp was secured about one hour following the report of the leak. The second was in place twenty minutes after that.
The fire department also sprayed the leak’s origin with a hose in order to cool and control any escaped and dissipating gas and make an ignition significantly less likely. The technique also indicates wind direction, and thus allows the firefighters to determine where the fumes are likely to spread.
Carol Reardon, who was visiting Santa Barbara with her Fallbrook garden club, said their hotel’s outdoor hallways reeked horribly of gas fumes, and that they had to wait elsewhere until the smell dispersed. Witnesses said the stench spread throughout the lower west side of Santa Barbara.
Blair added that it was fortunate that the gas company had two active units available to deal with the accident, and that the leak could have been a great deal more destructive.
If the gas had ever flowed into a residential are and found an ignition source, he said, then there could have been a serious fire or explosion, although such destructive incidents are fairly rare.
“You hear about those kinds of explosions happening,” he said. “But I’ve never experienced one like that here in the city.”
Blair noted that the incident might have had worse consequences had it occurred at a time other than the afternoon.