Two natural gas lines hit near downtown Bend

(Update: More details from fire officials on 2 incidents; rising tally of such calls)

A construction crew working at the site of a new hotel north of downtown Bend struck a natural gas line Tuesday morning, sending the tell-tale odor drifting for several blocks but prompting no evacuations or street closures, officials said.

The two-inch plastic gas line was reported broken around 9:30 a.m. by a backhoe at 1526 NW Wall Street, where a new 100-room Element by Westin extended-stay hotel is being constructed at the former site of The Bulletin.

The line hit at the corner of Wall Street and Olney Avenue is half the size of one that was severed last week near Third Street, which prompted evacuations, street closures and a repair process that took several hours.

But this time, that “rotten” odor added to odorless, colorless natural gas was reported to be smelled as far north as the McDonald’s on Third Street, as well as by motorists on the Bend Parkway.

Bend Deputy Fire Marshal Dan Derlacki said this break was less of a concern, in part due to different weather conditions. An inversion kept the gas close to the ground last week, while the wind was blowing the natural gas from Tuesday’s line break and causing it to dissipate.

A Cascade Natural Gas crew was quickly on scene to repair the leak and stop the flow of gas. The gas leak was reported stopped about an hour after the initial report.

Battalion Chief Dave Howe said utility crews had been looking for this line for three days but couldn’t find it. It was made of plastic, which made it easier to get the gas shut off.

“It’s a dead-end line, so they dug up the one side of it they knew they could access,” he said. “They had everybody on their crew out of the gas plume, so nobody was in danger. They were able to squeeze it off with a clamp quite quickly.”

Shortly after 11 a.m. came word of another natural gas line that had been hit at a Deschutes County archives warehouse on Northwest Kearney Avenue.

Fire officials said a worker using a lift hit a gas line that dropped down from the ceiling, causing a break in the plumbing connection. Workers were able to shut the gas off at the meter and stop the flow very quickly.

Cascade Natural Gas workers arrived shortly after the gas was shut off and cleared the building of any danger.

Battalion Chief Dave Howe said arriving firefighters found a strong smell of gas inside the building and a broken overhead gas supply line to a suspended gas heater.

Firefighters tested to make sure the gas concentration was not at explosive or ignition threshhold.

Howe noted that natural gas is lighter than air and tends to rise. So in outdoor releases, like the one on Wall Street, the gas rises harmlessly into the atmopshere.

But when it’s confined to a building and can accumulate, the danger level can rise quickly, depending on how much is leaking. Then, even an electric arc from a light switch, flashlight or heater can ignite the gas.

“Fortunately, the gas was shut off well before the gas was allowed to build up,” Howe said.

Bend firefighters have been called to a rising number of natural gas line break calls in recent years, from about 15 a year before 2012 to 73 calls last year.

“There is more construction going on — there’s a lot of bigger construction,’ Howe said. “There is a big huge project that Cascade Natural Gas is in the middle of, and it’s replacing all their old gas lines. So when you do that and you’re digging up, you’re going to find lines that you didn’t know were there, even when you got a locate.”