No injuries have been reported after a natural gas leak northeast of Fort Assiniboine attracted the attention of fire fighters, the RCMP and AltaGas personnel in the evening of Oct. 1.
According to Earle Tuele, president of AltaGas in Leduc, the cause is suspected to have been an individual digging on his or her land and inadvertently hitting and puncturing a distribution line.
“We haven’t completed our investigation yet, but it appears to us that the person doing the digging did not call Alberta One-Call for a call-before-you-dig locate,” he said.
The break in the line occurred around 8 p.m. that night, Tuele said, and resulted in 13 customers losing their gas service for a number of hours until the line was repaired and gas was pumped back into the line.
Customers were without gas until approximately 5 a.m. Sunday when AltaGas crews had completed re-lighting all the pilot lights in the affected buildings.
The line in question was a small-diameter plastic, medium-pressure line, he said. As such, it needed to be ‘squeezed off’ to stop the gas flow and allow it to be repaired.
Fort Assiniboine fire chief Ervin Gallatin confirmed the leak did occur, and said no evacuations were needed. He added it was a small leak and there was no risk of explosion, in part due to the wet and rainy conditions at the time.
Tuele said the damage to the line was minimal. In addition, he said he was unaware of any damage to anything other than the line itself.
“I’ve been advised there were no gas infiltrations of any buildings of any kind,’ he said. “Natural gas, being lighter than air, it dissipates quite readily once it leaks from the pipeline.”
In order to keep the area secure during the repair, Tuele said a few roads adjacent to the leak site were closed off to prevent drivers from getting too close and putting themselves at risk.
