(Spirit Lake)– A natural gas leak made for a few tense moments today (Wed.) in Spirit Lake. Fire Chief Pat Daly says the Spirit Lake Fire Department was called around 11:30 am after getting a report of a gas leak in the area of 703 22nd Street…
“We blocked off all the intersections. We went around with our meter. We actually found the leak at the other end of the block. At the old daycare there we found a small leak on top of the meter so we shut it off and we continued to look while the gas company was en route and we actually found it, it’s a break underneath the ground.”
Crews with Black Hills Energy remained on the scene repairing the line. Daly says they’ve had quite a few responses lately to gas leaks. He reminds everyone what to do in the event you smell natural gas…
“Get out of their place, don’t turn anything on, get out of the smell. Most of the time walk away instead of driving a car. A lot of times we’ll get there and there’s cars driving right back, right past where the gas leak is, so we want to keep all that stuff away, so. But yeah, don’t turn switches on, don’t do any of that stuff. Just leave and just walk somewhere and get out of the smell.”
Daly says a simple spark can ignite natural gas. He adds the month of February has been a busy one so far for the Spirit Lake Fire Department…
“Yeah, we’ve been getting a bunch of gas calls, smell calls, stuff like that. This like, not just gas, but this is like our 14th call out this month already, so.”
Firefighters were on the scene of today’s (Wed.) call for about an hour.
