Watch where you dig

[cstreit]

Story: A farmer is using a large posthole digger to install something in his field. Apparently did not call the local utility otherwise he would have learned of th location of a high-pressure gas main underground.



This looks bad right?


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....worse than you think! Apparently they didn't even find the digger or the remains of the farmer.

[pete3799]

Holly crap!
Guess he won't do that again.

[vash]

WOW!

that is in the middle of nowhere! it was obviously the farmers time to go.

[Rednine11]

I can just hear Marvin the Martian saying
Where's the Ka Boom. There was suppose to be an Earth shattering Ka boom....

[M.D. Holloway]

Poor dude, prolly vaporized and the digger is in orbit - maybe it was that fireball that streaked across the Wisconsn sky the other night?

[masraum]

Good link with a few more pics
Ruptured Gas Line | NewsLeak

[David]

These lines should be deeper than that. It wasn't a farmer digging that caused it:

snopes.com: Call Before You Dig! - Gas Main Explosion

[legion]

Call JULIE.

[sammyg2]

If you ever want to see what's under your property you can call USA, underground service alert and notify them of an intent to dig and an address. It's often called a digalert. You mark where you want to dig with chalk or paint or whatever, then you call the toll Free telephone# 1-800-227-2600. Call in at least two working days before you dig.

They in turn notify all utilities and companies that may have something in the ground. utilities show up and mark all their stuff.
If they mark it and you dig into it, it's your fault. if they don't mark it and you dig into it, you have zero liability.
Obviously that doesn't mean much if you get all blowed up but under most circumstances it's a really, really good idea. Oh, and it's free.

A couple years ago I was having a pool put in. I told the pool contractor that the back 12 feet of my property has a telephone company easement on it.
He said no worries, digalert.
He called in the digalert 72 hours prior to digging. Everyone showed up and marked their services, EXCEPT the telephone company. You can see where this is headed.

An hour into the dig, telephone company trucks were all over the neighborhood. A whole bunch of people were all of the sudden without phone service.
Two guys from AT&T eventually knocked on my door and one guy acted all pissed and tough. I said, "show me where you marked your service" and gave the guy with the white dress shirt and badge back some of his tough guy attitude. (LOL, AT&T badge. Prolly bought it at the swap meet to scare customers. )

He said, oh, you called in a digalert? I told him "Yep, and you guys apparently blew it off."

He said, "oh, sorry. Can we please have permission to go into your back yard to repair our phone lines?"
They worked on it all day and all night. Then they marked their service and the pool guy dug from a different location.
Never heard another word about it.

[Geronimo '74]

we had one of those explosions years ago. (10 I think)
Gasexplosion of Gellingen.
People sitting in passing cars with the windows open were burnt to the third degree, from almost a fifth of a mile away...

[David]

I had a similar, but not as bad issue with the phone company. I was replacing a fence and didn't call . Sure enough I hit electrical conduit right at the edge of the property line. So then I called.

Everyone came out except the phone company. Nobody else claimed the broken conduit. So 24 hours later, per the rules, I continued with my fence. I did squirt a little epoxy over the broken conduit, so maybe that fixed it. That was 10 years ago and last year the phone company had to dig in my backyard for something .

You can still dig where they mark, you just have to dig with hand tools.

[ckissick]

I've had PG&E be off on the location of a gas main by 40 feet. We were skeptical of their location, so hired a private locater who found it before we did with our drill rig.

Another time, I was doing a geotech job for a large municipal water district. A guy from the water district came out to mark where we should drill so we wouldn't hit their pressurized 4-foot water main. We hit it dead center. Created a nice looking geyser and knocked out the water supply for an entire town for two days.

[s_morrison57]

you can always use witchy sticks to find stuff but not all people have the power in them to make them work

[GH85Carrera]

When I put in my sprinkler system I made the call to have the utilities marked. I fired up the trencher and did not even get it down to depth before I cut the cable TV cable. They came right out and strung a temporary cable along the fence to get us back on line. They came back a few days later and put the cable in the bottom of my trenches alongside my pipes. They even dug under the sidewalk to bury the connection into the house. There was never a bill for me.

[vash]

not so sure U.S.A. will mark private property. they usually just tag the various utilities and show how they enter any private land.

[ckissick]

Originally Posted by vash

not so sure U.S.A. will mark private property. they usually just tag the various utilities and show how they enter any private land.

Right. USA does not do private property. If there's a utility easement, there will do that. USA will show where the gas lateral goes onto the property, and the gas meter will show where it hits the house. Dig very carefully between the two spots.

[schamp]

The new practice is to allow these high pressure gas line within high voltage electrical transmission line easements. Its just a time bomb waiting to go off.
On another note, does a utility like a pipeline company send you a calender each year? If so, your property is within the explosion zone. Look on the back of the calender- it will have emergency procedures on it. They have to send it out each year by law.

[sammyg2]

LOL, one other thing. If you are ever digging and hit red-colored concrete, STOP!

That's generally how the mark underground higher voltage electrical lines in industrial settings, by adding red coloring to the concrete slurry.

[rouxroux]

It was probably the guy who owned the Formula boat...guess he wanted to do a little gardening.

[pwd72s]

Fence contrator called the marking services before installing a hurricane fence for me...so much for the phone company marking service...it was a good 3' off....yep, the hole for one of the corner posts cut the neighborhood phone line.