Washington Gas says it is has identified and repaired the source of a gas leak that forced dozens of families out of their homes for multiple days in Centreville, Virginia.
Crews have been working to find the exact location of the leak since a house exploded on Quail Pond Court on Sunday, Feb. 15. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating whether the gas leak caused the explosion that left two people with minor injuries.
Nineteen homes remain evacuated as of late Tuesday afternoon, Washington Gas said in a statement. At one point last week, more than 50 homes were evacuated.
Washington Gas said it’s working with Fairfax County Fire and Rescue to safely relight appliances and do leak tests on each home’s gas piping.
After finding the source of the leak, crews did multiple pressure tests, gradually reintroduced gas into the system and did leak surveys at each stage, Washington Gas said.
Firefighters will continue to work with Washington Gas to monitor the system and do safety checks inside and outside of homes, the company said.
Many residents have expressed frustration and concern over the past week. Some said they called Washington Gas a couple days before the explosion to complain about the smell of gas in the area.
Other residents told News4 that Washington Gas crews were in their neighborhood as early as 9 a.m. Sunday morning.
“They were digging something in the yard. We saw that at 6:30 in the evening,” one resident said.
“They were on site when it happened, when the explosion took place,” another said. “I’ve heard from someone else that they tried to leave and that they had to be prevented from leaving the scene by either fire or police.”
News4 has heard from multiple people who say they saw Washington Gas crews attempting to leave the explosion scene.
News4 has asked Washington Gas for specifics, but the company deferred us to the NTSB, citing an ongoing federal investigation.
Washington Gas didn’t say the exact location of the leak in its statement on Tuesday. Fire officials previously said crews had found pressure loss in a gas line in the 5200 block of Belle Plains Drive
Fairfax County Fire Assistant Chief of Operations Eric Craven said Wednesday there was a stretch of pipe about 1,000 feet long with a loss of pressure, which indicated a leak.
“The gas company hasn’t put eyes on the leak, like, the exact portion of the pipe where the leak occurred, but they know the section of pipe where they’re losing pressure. So you’ve heard me talk previously that they’re narrowing that scope more and more in to a small area of pipe. That’s now a section about 1,000 feet long. … They know there’s a loss of pressure within that 1,000 feet,” he said.
Pat Warren, the director of NTSB’s Office of Railroad, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Investigations, said the agency is investigating what happened, how it happened and would make recommendations to make sure it doesn’t happen again. But the NTSB won’t “assign blame or liability,” Warren said.
Warren said the NTSB’s final report would take anywhere from a year to two years to complete.
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