Daily Sun staff
It could be Saturday until gas is fully restored to Beatrice Aquila customers after about 90 percent lost service when pressure was lost Thursday morning, Aquila officials said.
Aquila workers re-pressurized the system Thursday night and early Friday morning. Natural gas service had already been restored to some locations, including the Beatrice Community Hospital and Health Center about 2 a.m. Friday.
The natural gas outage occurred after an underground valve was not turned on after maintenance Wednesday.
Around 4,500 Beatrice Aquila customers had their meters turned off Thursday when company workers began restoring the system after it lost pressure during routine maintenance when an underground valve located at Eighth and Bell streets was left off, Rick Schwartz, Beatrice Aquila southern regional manager for Nebraska, said.
“To bring the whole system back in town, we have to shut the whole system down and turn all the meters off,” Schwartz said.
Saturday could be the earliest time before many people have natural gas again, Bob McKeon, Aquila communications manager, said.
“It could go into Saturday evening,” he said. “We will work as quickly and as safely as possible to restore service.”
Aquila began receiving complaints of low gas pressure around 7 a.m. Thursday, Schwartz said. At first, the situation was believed to be limited to only south Beatrice, but that was not the case.
The only portion of town not affected was West Court Street, the area west of the West Court Street bridge and north of the Gage County Industrial Park, he said.
“They are on a separate system and we were able to hold the pressure,” he said.
More than 60 Aquila service technicians from Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska converged onto Beatrice Thursday morning to assist in turning off 4,500 meters of their 4,800 customers at residences and businesses. Aquila worked until around 9 p.m. Thursday to turn off all meters in the affected area.
Each of the meters needs to be turned off before Aquila can restore the system, Schwartz said. If the meters aren’t turned off, there could be the potential for gas to release into homes or buildings, he said.
“It’s the only way to do a system restoration,” Schwartz said.
Once everyone’s meter has been turned off, Aquila can then restore the system.
It will take time to turn everyone back on as technicians will return to residences and businesses to turn the meters on and re-light pilot lights.
Aquila is asking all customers to not re-light their own pilot lights in case there are problems, he said.
“We want to be involved with the light-up, we want everyone to be safe,” Schwartz said.
Critical customers, such as Beatrice Community Hospital and Health Center, area nursing homes and in home patients, was to have their gas turned on first, he said.
Beatrice and Gage County officials have been working with Aquila, Mark Meints, Gage County Emergency Management coordinator, said.
Beatrice Mayor Dennis Schuster signed a disaster declaration Thursday afternoon to allow Aquila, accompanied by an officer, to enter unoccupied homes to turn off approximately 500 inside meters.
Gage County Red Cross is on alert in case an emergency shelter needs to be set up at the Southeast Community College Truman Center, Meints said.
“If (customers) need emergency or services they can contact us,” Meints said.
BCHHC was also affected by Thursday’s natural gas outage.
“The hospital is OK. We have diesel fuel back-up for our steam and hot water boilers,” said Diane Vicars, director of marketing at BCHHC, in a telephone interview Thursday afternoon.
“We have heat and hot water, so the only thing that’s affected at the moment is the laundry room and the kitchen, because the dryers and the ovens are on natural gas and we do not have back-up for them,” Vicars noted. “Depending on how long this takes, we may have to make other arrangements.”
“All our diagnostic and all our patient care are electric, so none of that has been affected,” she added.
As of Thursday afternoon, the dietary staff had made some adjustments, and no changes had to be made in Thursday evening’s meal of chicken strips, mashed potatoes and gravy and corn.
“Between the microwave and the steam kettle and a deep-fat fryer, they’re able to do quite well,” Vicars added.
Without the use of the kitchen ovens, the dietary staff will need to make some adjustments to the menus, noted Vicars. However, “I have heard that the hospital is on the priority list of getting our natural gas back.”
By Friday morning, things were “back to normal,” Vicars said.
“Natural gas was restored at 2 a.m. this morning and we were able to get everything up and running.”
Beatrice schools and restaurants were also affected by the outage.
Dale Kruse, Beatrice Public Schools superintendent, said the high school and elementary schools got through the lunch period Thursday with only a few modifications.
Some natural gas remained in the lines at the high school, which allowed the normal menu to be cooked, he said.
The high school also shuttles the lunch-time meals to the four local elementary schools. Kruse said the main change for the elementary schools Thursday was that the schools used paper plates instead of the normal trays to eliminate the need to use hot water to wash dishes.
At Beatrice Middle School, however, Kruse said the planned menu had to be revamped in favor of cold sandwiches served on paper plates.
Kruse thanked Peggy Johnson, the school district’s food service manager, for doing an excellent job adapting to the outage. In addition, Friday to be was a regularly scheduled day off for Beatrice public schools, meaning the district wouldn’t be faced with the same situation Friday.
Local restaurants also had to adapt to the natural gas outage Thursday.
Burger King was closed Thursday due to the lack of gas. A sign at the entrance told customers the restaurant was closed, while a pickup truck was parked at the entrance to the drive-through lane.
A number of lunch-time customers Thursday reported that they were told items cooked on gas appliances would not be available.
Scott Johnson, owner of Back Alley Eatery, said the situation affected his restaurant’s operations were affected by the outage.
“It slowed things down,” he said.
He said until gas is restored, only items that aren’t cooked in the oven would be available.
“It will be restricting our menu some,” he said.
If nothing else, however, he said at least the outage didn’t happen in the middle of winter.
“We lucked out as far as the weather is concerned,” he said.
This is one of the largest incidents of this kind as far as Aquila can remember, Schwartz said. In 1996, several customers were without gas after the tornado hit, but he said that outage was nothing to this magnitude.
Meints remembers when Wymore had a gas leak, but this shut-off is bigger, he said.
“There was an incident in Wymore, we had a gas leak, but we didn’t have to go to this extent to shut the gas off,” he said.
Aquila thanks their customers for their patience, McKeon said.
“We do apologize to our customers for their inconvenience,” he said. “We are restoring services as quickly and as safely as possible.”
Daily Sun staff writers Joelyn Hansen and Mary Wieters and editor Harold Campbell contributed to this report.