By Mallory Panuska
Times West Virginian
FAIRMONT
May 16, 2008 01:36 am
—
Following investigations over the past two weeks, officials are still unsure of the exact cause of a set of explosions that occurred in the western part of the county during the early morning hours of April 30.
Mike Dorsey, chief of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Homeland Security Emergency Response Unit, said workers from the department were checking a neighborhood in Metz for explosive levels of methane and oxygen gas after two underground explosions shook a residence and a garage located in the area.
The explosions happened within hours of each other, with the first occurring at the Delaney residence and the second at a large shop next door that was used to house equipment for Wilson and Wilson.
Residents at seven households in the area were evacuated from their homes while the situation was investigated.
Officials from the DEP and the Mannington Fire Department, who were first on scene during the event, determined soon after the events occurred that explosive gas had built up underneath the residence and along the ceiling of the shop.
Dorsey said officials checked the area soon after the explosions, then early last week and again Wednesday afternoon. During those investigations he said all of the levels were safe and Wednesday was expected to be the last time they would need to check the levels unless they are called back out.
“When we were there after the initial incident two weeks ago then early last week, all of the levels were well below explosive levels,” Dorsey said.
But even after these investigations, Dorsey and Tom Hoffman, senior vice president with Consol Energy, said that the exact cause of the incidents is still unknown.
Consol was capping some wells in the area as part of some nearby mining that is going on, and employees were exploring the possibility that maybe the work was what caused the explosive levels of gas to build up.
“We never figured out what exactly caused the situation. There are a lot of activities with mining companies,” Dorsey said.
As a “goodwill gesture,” as Hoffman put it, Consol offered to pay for hotel rooms for the evacuated residents in the area up until last Friday.
And although officials could not give a 100 percent guarantee that it would be safe for the residents to return to their homes after that day, Hoffman said everyone who was investigating the situation did not turn up any evidence that there would be any additional risk.
“The only reason we got involved is because we had been plugging gas wells in the area. In the early stages, when nobody knew what cause was, it would be the right thing to do to help people,” Hoffman explained. “No one has been able to determine any gas problems and there is not any solution for what happened. We determined as best that we could that there does not appear to be any risk.”
He said that employees from Consol and officials from various state agencies did a “thorough and exhaustive search of the area” and turned up nothing that appeared to be harmful. He also said that there was nothing that showed that the mining being done by Consol, which he said is about a half a mile away from where the explosions occurred, had anything to do with the incident.
“I think we have done as much as we can do. There is no relationship to mining that we can see, and we’ve done the best we can to help people,” Hoffman said.
Besides paying for the hotel rooms, Hoffman said he does not believe that Consol will compensate the evacuees any further.
“That which we did was really just a good-neighbor gesture,” Hoffman explained. “The mining itself is about a half a mile away, and we won’t be in that area for a number of months. It doesn’t seem very likely that mining had anything to do with this. It may have been a working hypothesis at the beginning, but there doesn’t seem to be any indication that gas would seep through on a continuing basis.”
The Marion County Office of Emergency Services has also stepped in to help investigate and monitor the situation.
Chris McIntire, OES director, said the office is basically just making sure everything is being monitored correctly. He said that up to this point, everything has been running smoothly, and Consol has taken all of the proper precautions and are making sure all of the appropriate investigations are being completed as they begin mining in the area.
“Consol has done a lot of preventative measures,” McIntire said. “They are really stepping up to the plate to try to help out.”
He said that local emergency service officials are keeping an eye on the situation in the area and will continue to make sure things are monitored correctly while Consol continues to mine over the next six to nine months.
He said that anyone who has any concerns about anything or thinks that there might be explosive gas in the area is urged to call 911 and report it so that officials can go out and check the levels.
And while McIntire said that nothing dangerous has been detected since the explosions, there is no way to fully guarantee that nothing would ever happen in the area again.
For Shawn Haught, one of the area evacuees, this is a troublesome feeling.
Haught said last week that he was uncomfortable with returning to his home because no one could guarantee it was safe. He said that he was also frustrated with the situation because he was only being told minimal amounts of information about what exactly happened or what caused the explosions.
He said he also believed that his neighbors had similar concerns and frustrations.
“I guess Consol is upset because it’s not their fault, but whose fault is it? Houses don’t just blow up; it’s not a common thing that happens,” Haught said. “It’s a high coincidence that they were tapping wells and mining under us and it’s a gas problem.”
Haught said he was also upset that he and his neighbors were not being compensated any further for the inconvenience they incurred.
As for the Delaneys, the family experienced a total loss with the explosion, Marsha Delaney said. And while she said the situation has been a significant inconvenience for her and her family, she feels fortunate that they all got out of the house alive.
“It’s been an inconvenience,” she said. “I don’t know what to say except that we’re taking it a day at a time.”
Delaney added that the family was in the midst of settling with Consol to sell their property, which they had decided to do just weeks before the explosion occurred.
She said Consol officials informed the family that they needed to purchase the property to look for an abandoned well to plug before they could begin mining.
“(Consol) was going to buy the property anyway. We were already in the process of them buying it,” Delaney said. “They weren’t sure where the well was on the property, so we decided to sell the property to them so they could start tearing it apart and find out where it was.”
Minus the Delaneys, Dorsey said this week that he believes that most of the other residents in the area had returned to their homes and were staying in them.
E-mail Mallory Panuska at mpanuska@timeswv.com.
Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.