CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Charlotte Fire Department officials said at about 11:30 a.m. Tuesday a contractor doing work for Google Fiber struck a natural gas line.
"This one only affected one residence. The other one the other night was like a main,” said CFD Capt. Wendall Jolly.
Read our past coverage:
- Service restored after crew digging Google fiber lines cuts gas line
- Google Fiber contractor ruptures gas line to homes
- Crews working on fiber network cut gas line in north Charlotte
- Contractors installing Google Fiber accidentally cut gas line
- CFD: Google Fiber crews hit gas line while working
He’s referring to Friday night when gas service was cut to nearly 300 north Charlotte homes in the Highland Creek neighborhood during extremely cold temperatures.
"Is it happening pretty often these days?" reporter Tina Terry asked Jolly.
"Pretty frequently in this area," Jolly said. "There's a lot of construction going on, a lot of work."
In 2015 Channel 9 reported at least one line break every month between July and October, mostly by contractors for AT&T and Google Fiber. Channel 9 asked Piedmont Natural Gas how many line breaks have been caused by those contractors since early last year, but they haven't answered that question.
"It can be very dangerous; they're electrical lines," said Ruby DuBay with Blythe Construction Company.
Her company is not responsible for the recent fiber work, but she knows how important it is to have utility lines marked before digging. Even then, she said it doesn't always prevent accidents.
"There is a chance that errors happen and utilities don't get located," said DuBay.
She said that's why companies have to be extremely careful.
"We do a lot of soft digging as well to make sure the lines are where they're at," said DuBay.
Piedmont Natural Gas said the lines in the Highland Creek Neighborhood were marked before the main was cut Friday.
Google Fiber hasn't said exactly what led to the mistake, but Saturday they released a statement:
"Google Fiber is building one of the biggest and most complex infrastructure projects in Charlotte's history. We want to be good neighbors, so we're doing everything we can to prevent unnecessary disruptions and resolve issues quickly.
"In each case, the problem was promptly identified, both the Charlotte Fire Department and Piedmont Natural Gas were immediately notified and crews soon went to work, going door-to-door to help restore service within a few hours. We take all construction-related incidents very seriously, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused."