STORM2K

FORT WORTH, Texas -- A city crew cut a gas line just a few feet from the Harris Hospital emergency room in downtown Fort Worth Monday night, threatening the hospital and its patients.

It started when a contractor for the hospital hit a water line. The water company came to repair it, and that crew hit the gas line.

"We had a crew out making the water line repair," said Mary Gugliuzza of the Fort Worth Water Department. "They were digging away from the mark for the gas line and hit where the gas line really was."

In just seconds, gas shot out like a geyser.

"You could see the debris cloud for four or five stories straight into the air," said Fort Worth Fire Department Lt. Kent Worley.

Crews were fortunate there wasn't an initial explosion from the gas leak. The Ben Hogan Center at the hospital was evacuated.

But there was a potentially bigger problem -- keeping the noxious fumes away from the hospital and the patients inside. The Fire Department used a special nozzle to create a mist that formed a barrier.

"It helped dissipate what gas was trying to drift over toward the hospital, because it was a very light south wind that we had," Worley said. "The prevailing wind was moving into that direction, and since that was somewhat of a canyon, we wanted to create a wall, and that's what we were able to do."

Those guys were very lucky that a large boom didn't follow the debris cloud.

We had the same thing happen over in Tampa area recently but it was a crew cleaning up dirt from some flooding that had happend last month that took this long to dry up. No one was hurt but the comapny doing the cleanup had to foot the bill to clean up the neighborhood after the gas leak spewed mmud all over the houses .

Contractors are required to contact utility companies before they dig. The utility companies are required to come out and mark the locations.
If the line is marked accurately and the contractor still hits it, it's the contractor's fault. If the line is marked inaccurately, it's the utility company's fault.