Nice job to CTEH for the fastest response time ever to an emergency!  If you don't know, I respond to emergency chemical releases all over North America to analyze people's exposures.  It could be a chemical plant fire, a train derailment, an oil spill, or something like that.

So at 4:56 p.m. last Thursday, July 19, I was shocked to see a plume of dust coming from the ground across the street - at first I thought it was water, but then I saw no wetness, only the hazy, wavy lines that could only indicate a gas release.  Sure enough, a guy digging up a tree across the street had hit a gas line which was marked to be on the other side of the sidewalk where he was digging (not his fault, apparently). 

I immediately ran to our equipment room for an air monitoring device which can detect whether the air is explosive or not.  It reads in percent, i.e., when it reads 100%, that means the air is explosive. 

I got up to 100% (also the max reading) on the road that runs in front of our building.  So we "set up a perimeter" and re-routed traffic through our parking lot.  We also monitored at some of our employees cars as they started them, to reassure them there was no risk of an explosion as they started their cars. 

A lot of times we joke that we're "saving lives" on sites because more often than not, we're just documenting the fact that the air is clean ("just making sure").  But in this instance, I'd like to think we may have actually been "saving lives."

Nice job, CTEH, for the fastest response time ever (I was on-site at 4:57 p.m.), and one safely and well done!