A gas line explosion near Lake Springfield has left about 1,700 City Utilities customers without power.
CU, emergency medical teams, Springfield Police and the Springfield Fire Department responded to the incident, and nearby residents were evacuated.
There have been no injuries. According to the CU outage map, about 1,700 customers in the area are without power.
Police urge people to avoid the area until the incident has been cleared by CU.
Around 11:30 a.m., CU employees were doing scheduled maintenance work on a gas transmission line near the intersection of Briar Street and Charleston Avenue when a valve malfunctioned and started blowing natural gas, igniting immediately, according to CU communications manager Joel Alexander.
It sent a fireball straight up and into some overhead utility lines, resulting in “quite a bit of damage” to power structures and utility poles, leaving around 1,700 people without power. In addition, the flames caused heat damage to nearby homes, and destroyed two vehicles and a trailer owned by CU. Several surrounding roads have been closed in the area.
Alexander said that CU will hopefully be able to start reestablishing power for the majority of customers by late in the night on July 17, after initially anticipating it being well into tomorrow (July 18), before customers in the area had power.
“We’re gonna do everything we can to rapidly get this taken care of, but we’re looking at quite a bit of damage on this,” he said.
The three CU employees that were in the pit they had dug to access the gas lines were able to escape with only minor cuts and scrapes, but were otherwise uninjured.
“It’s unfortunate incident, but the fortunate side of it is that no one was was injured,” Alexander said. “Our role now is to recover this, get people back up with service just as rapidly as we can so it will be an all hands on deck situation as we assess this for the electric outages, for the gas situation, and just get everybody back on with power as quickly as possible.”
Steven Prisliski, who was putting up a fence nearby when the incident occurred, said he heard what sounded like thunder and an explosion at the same time around 11:20 a.m.
Prisliski said he saw power lines down on the ground and flames well over 100 feet tall.
This story will be updated as more information becomes available.
