GILROY
– A ruptured PG
&
amp;E gas line forced the evacuation of three homes near Glen
View Elementary School Wednesday afternoon.
GILROY – A ruptured PG&E gas line forced the evacuation of three homes near Glen View Elementary School Wednesday afternoon.
The rupture occurred around 3:30 p.m. and was caused by a private contractor using a tractor scoop to uproot trees and fix a portion of a sidewalk on the southwest corner of Eighth and Princevalle streets.
Neighborhood families were forced to wait in their cars or neighbors’ homes until the large line was shut off at 7 p.m., and several employees at Glen View were kept from starting their vehicles for fear that the spark might cause an explosion.
The Gilroy Police Department set up a two-block barricade around the area’s perimeter while firefighters evacuated homes.
“It was really loud, it sounded like a huge rush of air,” said Patrica Bushnell, who works as a home care nurse at the corner of Eighth and Princevalle streets. “We had to sit in my car for about three hours, and you could smell gas the whole time.”
According to Bushnell, a private contractor had been hired to fix the small portion of sidewalk, but hit the four-inch gas line when he was digging up tree stumps.
PG&E representatives were able to shut off the gas line by 5:30 p.m., but PG&E Spokesperson Jeff Smith said it could’ve been much worse.
“It’s not uncommon that a gas line is hit during construction, but a four-inch line is uncommonly large,” Smith said. “A lot of gas flows from that large of line.”
Smith said a similar sized line was punctured in a Cupertino neighborhood last month, and a nearby home’s pilot light sparked an explosion that caught the home on fire.
This morning Gilroy city officials said they had not issued a construction permit for Wednesday’s project, and no inspector marked the lines before the digging began.
“I was getting ready to leave and then we heard an enormous hissing sound,” said Janet Rasmussen, a secretary at Glen View Elementary School who was one of the six staff members forced to remain in the school’s office for two hours until the leak was fixed. “The smell of gas was overwhelming. We were lucky this didn’t happen last week when the students were here.”
