As thousands of Far Southwest Side residents endured a second wintry day without heat, City Hall blamed Peoples Energy Co. for the utility’s worst outage in 25 years–even though it was a city crew that broke a gas main and sparked a spectacular natural gas fire.
A day after the fire, city and utility officials on Wednesday described the misdirected attempts of gas company workers to turn off the natural gas coursing through two massive pipes beneath a street lit by flames.
In part because of the peculiarities of the aging gas infrastructure, it took three hours for the gas company to figure out which valves could cut the flow of gas to the fire, officials said.
As it turns out, most of the homes that lost gas service were connected to a main that was not directly involved but was cut off because the utility was having problems determining which pipe the burning gas was coming from.
On Wednesday, Daley criticized Peoples Energy for resisting city requests for information about its infrastructure. A City Council committee is expected to hold hearings into Peoples’ response.
“I am upset–what, do you want me to have a heart attack?” Daley told reporters. Customers and officials “are very concerned about the response of Peoples and rightfully so.”
During one of the few stretches of bitter cold this winter, about 3,775 homes were still without natural gas Wednesday night.
Some families were hunkered down with space heaters, but many had fled to hotels or the homes of neighbors and relatives. Restoring gas service to homes is difficult and time-consuming, requiring a gas worker to go to each home, and the utility expected some customers to be without heat until Friday.
Sitting in full winter garb in her frigid kitchen, Marie Portal was trying to decide Wednesday whether to wait for gas service to be restored. In a wheelchair because she is recovering from hip surgery, she was being warmed only by a heating pad.
“To me this is detrimental to my health to be in a position like this,” Portal said.
Peoples Energy Senior Vice President Desiree Rogers defended the utility’s handling of the episode.
“We are not happy that we’ve got this many customers off, but we feel that we have done everything that we could in a responsible manner to take the systems off safely, to make sure that there were no additional problems,” Rogers said.
As officials sorted out the mishap Wednesday, the trigger of the fire became clear: A city sewer crew was using chains and a backhoe to pull a scrap section of iron pipe from a tangle of utility lines and inadvertently broke open a 6-inch gas main. The crew’s propane heater, burning within 10 feet of the work site, ignited the seeping gas into billowing flames.
At about 1:40 p.m. Tuesday, the crew was working near 107th Street and Kedzie Avenue in the Mount Greenwood area, repairing a sewer line beneath the 6-inch main and another 20-inch gas main.
Within 10 feet of the hole that the crew dug to get to the line was a propane heater that softens the mortar used to repair the sewer line, said Robin Taylor, spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Sewers.
To get to the sewer line, the crew had to remove an abandoned, 6-foot-long segment of cast-iron pipe wedged in between the gas mains and the sewer, Taylor said. The crew strapped a chain around the scrap piece of pipe, latched the other end of the chain to a backhoe, and began pulling the pipe.
As the crew pulled the pipe out, it ruptured the 6-inch gas main, Taylor said. Ignited by the heater, flames shot out from the rupture.
The use of propane heaters on construction sites began under a pilot program last year “and went into full implementation this year,” replacing 40-gallon drums used for burning wood, a staple of wintertime building sites for decades, said Sewer Department Commissioner John Roberson.
“This was not a result of recklessness or negligence…All due care was taken,” Roberson said. “We do this type of repairs every single day. This is a rare occurrence.”
The flames prevented Peoples Energy crews from determining whether it was the 6-inch or 20-inch main that had ruptured, said Peoples Energy spokesman Luis Diaz-Perez.
Going into manholes spaced along the main, utility workers shut off nine valves on the 6-inch line in the vicinity of the break. But that failed to stop the flow of gas.
Peoples Energy crews then turned to the 20-inch main and shut off eight valves on that line, but the fire continued, Diaz-Perez said.
Finally, crews went back to the valves previously shut off on the 6-inch main. One of those had not properly closed the first time, and on the second turning, it cut off the flow of gas, extinguishing the fire at 4:40 p.m.
Peoples Energy officials could not explain why that valve did not shut the gas off the first time. “I don’t know why that was the case,” Rogers said.
It is not uncommon for city crews to strike underground gas lines. During a three-year period ending in 1999, the city of Chicago paid Peoples Gas more than $600,000 to resolve nearly 400 claims related to damage caused by city crews, according to city records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Nearly three-quarters of those claims were directly related to damage to underground lines, accounting for $496,000 of the total payouts.
Nevertheless, City Hall fixed on the shutting of the 20-inch main as a large cause of the inconvenience from the mishap, which at its peak cut service to 4,500 homes.Marcia Jimenez, the city’s acting environment commissioner, said only 200 homes in the neighborhood would have lost service if Peoples Energy officials shut only the 6-inch main.
Peoples’ Rogers said the utility had to shut off both gas mains that serve the area because the flames kept workers from determining which had ruptured. “I’m not sure how someone could second-guess that decision,” Rogers said.
Jimenez also questioned why it took three hours for the utility’s crews to shut down gas to the break.
“We feel there should have been an immediate response,” Jimenez said. “All valves have to have annual maintenance, and there will be an investigation to ensure these valves were properly maintained.”
The Illinois Commerce Commission is investigating the incident, and the city is conducting its own probe, officials said.
City officials also complained that Peoples Energy has balked at their requests since last September for detailed information about the utility’s infrastructure and how it operates. Jimenez said the city needs the information to map out its emergency response plans, but company officials “have not been forthcoming.”
Rogers said the city has not contacted Peoples Energy about the development of an emergency response plan since June.
“We don’t want that kind of infrastructure information in just anyone’s hands,” Jimenez added. “It must be protected and confidential. That is their reservation. We understand that.”
The gas outages forced three Chicago public schools that lost gas service, Cassell School, Mount Greenwood School and Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, to transfer students to neighboring schools, a Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman said.
Two Catholic high schools canceled school on Wednesday because of no heat. Heat was restored later in the day, and officials said classes would resume Thursday at Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High School and Brother Rice High School.
Throughout Mount Greenwood, neighbors were calling each other to see if they had had gas service restored.
Karen Bourke and her family spent Tuesday night in layered clothing, bundled up in comforters. They didn’t want to use a space heater because they worried about safety but gave in Wednesday morning.
Gas service to their house was restored at about 10 a.m. Wednesday. Bourke said the episode should serve as a wake-up call to the city and the utility to improve utility infrastructure in the neighborhood.
“It’s amazing this could happen and affect so many blocks,” Bourke said.
Tim Cantu, whose home plunged to 40 degrees after he lost heat, stood outside a Peoples Energy van Wednesday night, trying to learn when workers would bring service back to his home and allow him to check out of a nearby hotel. He was told to call his alderman.
“I’m going to hit them up for reimbursment for the hotel,” he said. “I don’t think they were prepared for the scope of what happened.”
