Gas service restoration for 4,000 Beaver County residents expected to take days
ECONOMY, Pa. (KDKA) -- Columbia Gas crews are working night and day to restore natural gas service for thousands of customers in Beaver County.
Columbia Gas started the restoration process on Monday night. Service has been restored to more than 20 percent of customers, the company said Tuesday night. Crews have to go into each and every home and business. It will take several days to complete the restoration process.
Columbia Gas crews from across Pennsylvania and Ohio are working around the clock. They're using a phased approach to restore natural gas service for 4,000 customers. Customers are grouped into one of the phases based on the scope and complexity of the service restorations in their areas.
"We're going to be addressing this in six different phases, so this is going to take several days for us to complete. So some customers may see their service restored sooner than others but the approach we're taking is a measured approach and it's the safest and quickest way that we can get service restored for customers," said Lee Gierczynski, a spokesman for Columbia Gas of Pennsylvania.
Columbia Gas shut down service in the Baden, Conway, Economy and Freedom areas on Sunday night. Crews shut off gas meters at every home and business.
Now crews are going back into neighborhoods to purge gas lines, restore service and go into each home to make sure it's safe.
"They'll do safety checks for your furnace, your hot water tank, your gas stove, your gas dryer. They'll relight all those appliances and make sure your service is working properly and you'll be good to go," said Gierczynski.
Gierczynski said technicians found an issue with natural gas introduced into the system by a third-party upstream gas supplier. He said it's possible a pocket of air got into the system, but the cause is under investigation.
Engineers from the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission's safety division have been on site since Sunday. A PUC spokesperson said they "are continuing to investigate the outage as well as monitoring the safe restoration of service to residents and businesses."
"We want customers to be aware there may be our technicians out late at night trying to restore service. All of our employees and contractors have IDs so if you have questions about that, just ask for their ID or call our 800 number and we can confirm their identity that way," Gierczynski said.
The Columbia Gas customer service phone number is 1-888-460-4332.
Ambridge Area Middle School students learned remotely on Monday and Tuesday.
As many people could be without heat for several more days, a warming shelter run by Columbia Gas remains open at the Conway Municipal Building.
Some businesses are making it work and staying open without heat.
"Might get a little chilly but, yeah, we'll figure out a way," said Stefanie Ruggeri, owner of Brewed Awakening Coffee and Espresso Bar in Economy.
Columbia Gas asks people to keep their porch lights on if they still don't have natural gas service.
Residents can find a list of the impacted streets and find updates on Columbia Gas' alert page.
