Residents Nervous Following Beaver County Gas Explosion
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CENTER TOWNSHIP (KDKA) -- Residents in Center Township, Beaver County, have been shaken following a gas pipeline explosion that sent a fireball into the sky over the county
"There's nothing left! It's like you see in the movies. You know ,napalm. Looks like the hillside, all the trees down there, what's left of em, its black like charcoal."
Sam Rosati says the freezer and furnace are the only items still identifiable. "We all got out, that's the main thing," Rosati says.
The charred end of the blown-out pipeline is visible like a gaping mouth coming out of the ground. Everything ahead of it obliterated. The company is in the process of investigating what caused the blowout early yesterday.
Alexis Daniel is the spokesperson with Energy Transfer and says, "We do think there may have been a contributing factor in the wet weather and there was a landslide but until we can complete the investigation we can't say definitively."
The folks who live on Ivy Lane say they are getting tired of all the gawkers coming down their street.
Brandy Friedrich says, "Everybody in the township is curious about what happened and they are trying to come down the street."
So security is checking everyone to make sure they belong in the area closest to the blast.
An endless parade of trucks carrying heavy stone arrived throughout the day bringing what was needed to create a road to the blowout site. The pipeline was in the early stages of production had just started carrying gas on September 3rd. The flow won't be restored anytime soon. Daniel says, "Until we finish the investigation and do a thorough inspection of the line it will be held at this time."
Residents say they want to know when the flow is restored and they have a lot of questions before that happens.
Friedrich says, "A lot of us don't even feel safe in our homes cause its not a matter of if, it's a matter of when this is going to happen again. That was one pipeline there's another there too and what assurance do we have that this one is not going to go?"
Rosati will be meeting with his insurance company and the folks from Energy Transfer tomorrow. Whatever they come up with to make the Rosati's whole Sam says it won't involve rebuilding. "The wife don't want move back down there now. After what we saw, the sounds we heard, the embers bouncing off the windows, she just doesn't want to."
