Last night when I came home from work I found Ken and our next door neighbor talking out by the mailbox with a PG&E employee. It seems that our neighbor smelled gas when he went to get the mail. He called PG&E and they told him to gather his family and evacuate!
Yikes!
Well, further investigation by the PG&E person with some kind of sensor found that while the leak level was 80 at the mailbox (I don't know what 80 is out of. 100, 1000?) it was 0 inside both our houses. So we didn't need to evacuate unless we wanted to.
We all stood outside looking at both our RVs. Hmmm. Nope. We'll leave them parked where they are and see how it goes. I did, however, gather and 'evac' kit: we have two dog packs full of emergency supplies and their leashes, our bird's food and her carrier, and some other things, all set by the door.
The PG&E guy (I never did get any one's name) stayed by his truck and warned anyone who came near the area (like the mailman) that there was a gas leak and not to light up. He waited until the repair crew arrived before he left.
The PG&E backhoe - we hoped it wouldn't be used
We turned off our heater (figured they were turning off the gas and we'd just be blowing cold air around) and stayed indoors, out of their way, until we heard the jackhammer.
Looking over our driveway towards our RV driveway and the neighbor's.
There was really nothing to do but go to bed at this point.
At 1am a look out the door showed the trucks were gone. Cool. They must be finished!
When I left for work in the morning though, there were cones around the hole.
I talked about it all at work thinking that when I got home it would all be fixed.
Nope.
This is what I saw when I came around the corner on my way home
Our cul-de-sac was busy
The hole was now a trench
We think this is the broken gas pipe (but what do we know)
This picture shows a clamp on one flexible pipe and a whole lot of other pipes. It truly makes me understand the PG&E signs that say "call before you dig."
The backhoe must have driven over our bricks - there's tire tracks (ok - one tire track) and the bricks are all out of whack.
After thinking last night that everything was done, I'm not even going to guess if it's all done tonight. I did take a short video of the backhoe filling in the trench. But for all I know when I wake up tomorrow there will be ANOTHER hole.
We continue to listen to the equipment outside. A new (to us) PG&E person came into the house and checked all our pilot lights. We actually only had one. Since we've never had our gas turned off before we didn't know if our pool equipment had a pilot light (nope - electric ignition) or if our house heater had a pilot light (nope again - electric ignition). The only thing that did end up having a pilot light was our water heater.
Our gas is back on now. The house is warming up again. And I felt comfortable putting our evacuation 'kit' back where it is normally stored.
I have to commend PG&E because they came out IMMEDIATELY and they were very polite (apologizing repeatedly for the inconvenience) and they got the job done. I think! I guess I shouldn't say that until all the trucks are gone, our lawn and RV driveways are back to their original condition, and we don't smell gas any more. (after all the bleeding of lines that they did our garage smelled really bad)
Here's to hoping that my next post is back to talking about Las Vegas!
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