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Police and firefighters shut down part of Tarentum street due to gas leak

Jul 04, 2023Jul 04, 2023

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A gas leak coming from a vacant house at 520 Third Ave. in Tarentum caused police and firefighters to shut down that block Saturday afternoon.

“There was an odor of natural gas coming from (the house),” said Deputy Fire Chief Brad James of Eureka Fire Rescue in Tarentum. “It looks as though the stove was displaced in the kitchen.

“There still was an active gas flow for whatever reason, either the valve or the hose. That’s yet to be determined. We’re unsure what happened.

“That could be between code enforcement, borough police and homeowners to figure out.”

James said that were no injuries and there is no current danger posed to the public.

A crew from Summit Hose also responded.

2 other gas line issues

Coincidentally, there were two other incidents in the same area at the same time.

“Peoples (natural gas) is (working) in the 500 block in the street (521) with one of its transmission lines. Plus we had an odor from a meter at 522,” James said. “So it’s been a busy little corner of Third Avenue in the last 48 hours.

James said the houses at 520 Third and 522 Third appear to be vacant, but “There’s a possibility according to police there may be squatters or unregistered renters.”

“We always err on the side of caution but we go on odor investigations, whether it’s natural gas or carbon monoxide, dozens of times a year,” he said. “So, we always use our monitoring equipment to make sure the atmosphere is safe for our people as well as the residents, the bystanders.

”In this situation there was an odor of natural gas, there were some readings that were consistent with a decent amount of natural gas. But it’s nothing that we can’t manage, it’s nothing that we couldn’t control and ventilate.

”It was a fairly standard operating procedure and response for us.“

Paul Guggenheimer is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Paul at [email protected].

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