Craig Moore with MLGW's Gas Engineering gives safety tips to customers in
Lowe's during last year's Gas Safety Awareness Day.
Years
ago early in his construction career, Joe L. Williams and another worker dug a
hole while planting a 10-foot oak tree in a new Germantown
“We
thought we were being careful but we cut into a gas line with a shovel,”
Williams said. “It hissed like a snake. The other guy I was with knew what to
do. He reached in like John Wayne with a pair of pliers and crimped the line.
This was before cell phones so I ran back to the office and called MLGW.”
Williams
who runs Joe Williams Construction in Memphis
While
the consequences for Williams luckily weren’t life-threatening, it can be.
To get the word out, MLGW
is teaming up Friday (March 27) with local Lowe’s Home Improvement Stores to
promote natural gas safety awareness from 9
a.m. to 3 p.m.
The “Call 811 Before You Dig” day comes just in time for April’s celebration of
National Safe Digging Month.
Last year, 233 gas lines in Shelby County
Each
year hundreds of homeowners, contractors and developers fail to call before
they dig resulting in thousands of dollars in damages to busted gas lines.
Nationally,
the Common Ground Alliance’s 2013 Damage Information Reporting Tool (DIRT) pinpointed
that one in four incidents resulted from someone failing to notify local
authorities before digging. Homeowners or contractors using the wrong tools
like a backhoe instead of a shovel caused about half of the reported DIRT cases.
“We
have 181 miles of gas transmission lines and 4,800 miles of smaller
distribution lines going to homes and businesses. The problem with this kind of
leak is, it’s preventable,” said Clift Phillips, lead gas system integrity
engineer at Memphis Light Gas and Water.
While
it rarely happens, a single spark from a lit cigarette, a backhoe hitting
concrete or pavement or even the buildup of static electricity at the rupture
point could set off a deadly explosion.
Phillips explained why: “Gas lines can have up to 250 pounds
of pressure. A car tire has 30 to 40 pounds of pressure.”
When installed, gas lines are required to be at least a
foot underground. But over time with erosion and landscaping, the lines could
be closer to the surface.
Last
year, MLGW general foreman for facilities location Vic Sawyer and 15 of his workers
spray-painted almost 64,000 areas where gas and other utility lines were buried
from homeowners and contractors who called 811 before digging. The program
which has been in existence since 1983 provides the location. Unfortunately locaters
are unable to ascertain the specific depth the lines are buried.
So far, Sawyer and his crew have answered 7,318 calls this
year for the free utility location service. “If you are piercing the earth,
it’s time to call,” Sawyer urged. “If you are putting in a new flower bed, an
irrigation system, a basketball goal or repairing your fence, you need to call
us.”
Even
when it is marked, diggers still run into trouble at times. “We were putting in
a driveway on Shady Hall just off Mendenhall and hit a gas line,” said contractor
James Shepherd. “It cost us $1,500 to fix it.”
While
Shepherd thinks the 811 program is good, even if an area is marked, he added,
“They don’t know how deep it is.”
For Williams’ part, he can’t understand why more
contractors and homeowners fail to use the free service. “I’ve driven by other
construction sites when they have hit stuff and you just shake your head,” said
Williams. “Why didn’t you call?”
Who ya
gonna call?
- Call 811 at least three business days before you
or a contractor starts digging so that underground lines can be marked for
free
- Call 911 or MLGW’s emergency line 901-528-4465 – if you smell rotten egg-like fumes, hear
a hissing sound or see dirt blowing from a recently dug hole
- Leave the area on foot before using cell phones, flashlights or other electric or battery-operated devices
Gas lines damaged in 2014
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