Luckily, a gas-line break Monday afternoon in Chantilly's Brookfield community didn't develop into a full-blown evacuation involving hundreds of people. But if things had reached that point, the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department was fully prepared and had the situation well in hand.
THE GAS LINE is owned by Williams Gas and is part of a 36-inch, natural-gas pipeline that runs from the Texas gulf area to New York state. The incident occurred around 1:15 p.m.
"A backhoe was checking gas lines for the company, for maintenance and service," explained Fire and Rescue Department spokesman Dan Schmidt. "And somehow, it hit the gas line in the 13600 block of Pennsboro Drive and ruptured it."
It was a high-pressure gas line, under about 700 psi (pounds per square inch), and gas fumes were escaping into the atmosphere. "They called the fire department, and we set up a safety perimeter that included about 150 homes," said Schmidt. However, only seven homes had to be evacuated because of the potential for danger.
"The gas company was able to bleed off the line in another spot to relieve the pressure," said Schmidt. "Then, working into the evening, they did a hot weld on it [to repair it]."
Meanwhile, responding to the event were fire stations 15 from Chantilly, 21 from Fair Oaks and 36 from Frying Pan, as well as the county's Hazmat Response Team, plus advanced life-support ambulances as a precautionary measure.
AT THE SAME time, Fairfax County's Emergency Management department helped plan for the possible evacuation of a large number of residents. Said Schmidt: "We coordinated with the school system and had a school bus ready to use to shuttle people to [nearby] Chantilly High School, if needed."
Authorities alerted the school and, with the help of the American Red Cross, evacuees would have been brought to the cafeteria there as a temporary, emergency shelter. However, it wasn't necessary and only people from a handful of homes had to evacuate until the repair work was completed.
Still, said Schmidt, "We were there to make sure people were safe [and out of harm's way] so, if something did happen, we could respond quickly."