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Workers hit gas main, downtown buildings evacuated
By adamg on Mon, 10/31/2016 - 9:12am
The hole scene. Photo by BFD.
Workers digging a hole outside 10 Tremont St., around the corner from City Hall, hit a six-inch gas main around 8 a.m., the Boston Fire Department reports.
Firefighters evacuated 10 Tremont and 40 Court St.
A National Grid excavation team arrived on scene around 9:40 a.m. to seal off the main.
Tim Lawrence reports he could smell the gas in Downtown Crossing.
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Comments
They are widening the
They are widening the sidewalks there, right? If so, good. Its very dangerous and dumb that the huge amount of pedestrians on that sidewalk are crammed in while drivers get four lanes for no good reason.
Always call 811
http://www.digsafe.com/
This is downtown Boston
Not everything is properly mapped out because there are centuries of different pipes around.
Seriously! That's standard
Seriously! That's standard procedure to call dig safe.......!
It's not only standard procedure
It's also state law. However, as others have noted, even Dig Safe has limitations
limits of DigSafe
The DigSafe page on Private Utility Locating includes this disclaimer: "Dig Safe provides this list only as a courtesy and does not warrant the accuracy or completeness of this list or any other aspect of these contractors’ services." They can't notify any companies that they don't know about or that don't exist anymore.
At one time it wasn't unusual to have old/aging lines capped &/or rerouted elsewhere on a property, so there's a lot of old stuff underground that a current service provider won't (can't) mark when they visit in response to DS's notification. Plus, gas leaks seem to be everywhere. I'm not always present when someone's there to mark a site, but over the years the gas workers I have run into are extremely serious & diligent about their work, & they will often mention how much they don't know.
This is not a utility issue, but it illustrates the potential dangers of gas when digging: once we found an old car on a residential site, about 12' directly below grade at top of slope & 6-13' back from toe of slope. (The car was presumably used as fill.) It was beyond Swiss cheese by then, so fluids seemed to have leaked out into the surrounding soils, but since it was mostly collapsed there was really no way for us to know what it still held. It only takes one spark. Obviously that caused an immediate site shut down. No explosion, but it was a cool & humbling experience for everyone. Plus, a very expensive clean up for the homeowners.
Upshot: don't be surprised at what you find, but be prepared to handle it flawlessly when things go wrong. The stakes are high. I have no idea what happened in this case, but it sounds like this was handled well, all things considered. I'm glad no one was hurt.
Yeah, you can see from the
Yeah, you can see from the mini excavator it was a Barletta machine. They are the general contractor doing the government center T stop work. I can almost guarantee that there are utility plans and everything was mapped out by dig safe. Shit happens and sometimes utilities are missed or not accurate on the plans which seems more likely than a contractor with decades of work not doing the easy thing to cover their ass and call dig safe.
Is the Green line still
Is the Green line still running? Or is the T fine with a kaboom or mass asphyxiation by natural gas in the tunnel?
It's Ok
Any explosion would be privatized for mutilation savings to you the taxpayer. No need to worry.
How wide an area would a 6 inch main cover?
How many building loose gas and require a National Grid employee go in an turn off the gas for the building before before they can turn the gas back on?
I smelled nothing
Hmmm, I rode my bike right past this at about that time (traffic was a mess) and didn't smell anything.