750 Return Home : Gas Leak Tied to Road Work

Heavy road-construction equipment apparently ruptured an underground gas line late Monday, forcing about 750 people to flee a Tarzana neighborhood for 10 1/2 hours, Southern California Gas Co. officials said Tuesday.

Construction vehicles being used to repave the roadway at Burbank Boulevard and Lindley Avenue apparently put enough weight on the metal cover of a thin, 10-foot-long pipe that it dislodged from a 12-inch underground gas line, company spokesman Mike Mizrahi said.

The seepage caused newly poured asphalt at the intersection to rise about four inches before the natural gas escaped to the surface with a hissing sound. Los Angeles firefighters were called to the scene about 9 p.m. and began evacuating the area.

Fire Department spokesman Jim Williamson said 759 residents from 88 homes, 23 apartment buildings and a nearby nursing home were forced to evacuate. The American Red Cross said 235 persons spent the night in an evacuation center in the Reseda High School gymnasium.

Gas to about 200 homes, apartments and a retirement home was cut off, Mizrahi said, and police blocked off 1 3/4-mile stretches of both Lindley Avenue and Burbank Boulevard.

No explosion or fire occurred and no one was reported overcome by fumes, fire officials said.

It was about 9:15 a.m. Tuesday, about 1 1/2 hours after the evacuation order was lifted, that residents of the Encino Riviera Senior Citizen Residence Hotel on Lindley Avenue--many wearing robes and using walkers--stepped off a bus and returned to their rooms.

Gas company workers could not locate the source of the leak until 4:45 a.m. because of the maze of underground gas lines in the area, Mizrahi said. He said six to eight gas lines, ranging from 2 to 36 inches in diameter, are at the intersection.

“As far as gas lines go, that’s the busiest intersection in the San Fernando Valley,” Mizrahi said.

Once the rupture was located, the line was shut off and the escaping gas quickly dissipated, Williamson said. Residents were allowed back into their homes at 7:20 a.m., and gas company employees went door to door to assist them in relighting pilot lights, Mizrahi said.

Service to customers whose gas comes from the main was not interrupted because other lines were used to bypass the area, Mizrahi said.

The whooshing of a helicopter was keeping Manfred Buyny and his wife, Alera, awake when they were alerted to the escaping gas.

“The Fire Department knocked on the door and told us to get out,” said Buyny, who lives on Hesperia Avenue. “I didn’t know at first what was going on, but I could smell the gas. I’m glad that they came to wake me up.”

Red Cross at Work

About 30 Red Cross volunteers from the Valley, downtown Los Angeles and the Santa Clarita Valley provided cots and blankets to the evacuees, about half of whom were senior citizens. A bagel store and the local franchise of a pizza restaurant chain donated food.

Dorothy Slager, 88, said some of the several dozen residents of the Encino senior-citizens hotel were frightened when the firefighters came for the evacuation. An RTD bus was used to take them to the high school.

“I shook like a leaf,” Slager said.

Several were upset at the inconvenience of spending the night in a high school gymnasium. But there were exceptions.

“There’s a very bright 94-year-old lady there who told the others to stop complaining,” a Red Cross nurse said.

Virginia Navarro had finished watching a television news program and had fallen asleep when there was a banging on the door. It was firefighters asking that she, her husband and their 15-month-old son leave.

“You could smell the gas right away,” she said, “so we just got out of the house as fast as we could.”

The intersection was reopened to traffic about 11:30 a.m. Tuesday. The rupture was repaired shortly after 4 p.m.