READING, Pa. – UGI has responded to two gas leaks in Berks County in the last week.
Karon Boyer lives in the block adjacent to the 100 block of West Douglass Street in Reading that was evacuated Monday night after somebody reported smelling gas.
“All of a sudden, I’m watching a movie, and right in the middle of it – BOOM – everything goes off,” said Boyer.
She and her husband weren’t among the evacuees, but they didn’t have power for several hours after it was shut off for UGI to do repairs to what they determined was a gas leak.
“In that case last night, we had to get to the source of that gas leak, which is obviously underground, and whenever there’s a solid surface of frost on the ground, the gas has trouble, nowhere to vent,” said John Mason, UGI Public Relations Manager. “So, it can move around and make it sometimes hard to determine exactly where the leak is.”
Forty people were evacuated while those repairs took place.
“Our volunteers stepped up and opened up an emergency shelter so that folks who were unable to get into their homes had a safe place to go to be out of the cold,” said Cristina Maisel with the American Red Cross Greater PA Region.
This leak came less than a week after one on Claire Drive in Exeter Township in which people there were also evacuated.
“These were two separate gas leaks that happened to occur in very cold temperatures,” Mason said. “Broadly speaking, with very cold ground, and the shifting of the ground, that can be tough on infrastructure.”
UGI says in these two incidents people did exactly what they should and called when they smelled something unusual.
The cause of both is still undetermined and it is uncertain if either had anything to do with the cold temperatures.