DE BERRY, Texas (KLTV) – Fire officials are giving safety advice after a gas pipeline rupture Saturday prompted evacuations in part of Panola County.
The Panola County Sheriff’s Office said deputies and a fire marshal were called to a gas blowout on County Road 324 in De Berry, an unincorporated community east of Carthage.
David Britt, assistant fire chief at Inter Community VFD, said crews initially received conflicting location reports before locating the ruptured 16-inch pipeline behind a residence at the end of CR 324.
“Upon reaching 324, you could hear the gas from the pipeline,” Britt said. “We made our way to the end of that, the dead end road. And at that point we located a ruptured pipeline behind a residence there.”
Britt said the homeowners were not at home when the rupture occurred. Fire crews made contact with them and evacuated residents on CR 324 as a precaution.
“We staged probably 300 or 400 yards up the road from it and went ahead and evacuated the people that were on that county road,” he said.
Britt said there were not many homes on the road that required evacuation. No injuries were reported.
Britt said a Texas Gas employee located the line and shut it down about 15 minutes after arrival.
Fire crews waited for gas company personnel to arrive and shut down the pipeline. Britt said a Texas Gas employee located the line and shut it down about 15 minutes after arrival. Residents were able to return home after the Texas Gas employees shut off the line.
“With that kind of rupture, there’s really nothing we can do until gas companies show up and shut the line down, which is what happened,” Britt said. “It ran. I’m guessing it bled off pretty hard for about 30 minutes or so before he got it shut down.”
The rupture did not cause a fire; it only released gas, Britt said.
Britt said pipeline gas poses inhalation risks and often lacks the additive that gives natural gas its distinctive smell, making detection difficult.
“The bad part is with a lot of the gas that’s in these lines, they don’t have the stuff in it that makes it smell like natural gas. So you don’t really detect the odor like you normally would,” Britt said.
Britt advised residents to evacuate an area if they hear a pipeline explosion and to comply with firefighter evacuation requests.
“If you’re in the area of a pipeline explosion and you know that’s what it is and you could hear it from your residents, the best thing to do is just go ahead and probably vacate the area,” he said.
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