Gas levels up in Wheatley prior to holiday

By Mark Ribble

WHEATLEY — Gas levels in Wheatley spiked on Friday, October 8 with monitors going off at the blast site at 4 am.

Members of Chatham-Kent Fire Services, the Provincial Hazmat Team and Golder Associates were at the scene and sent samples of the gas to lab facilities in Windsor for a full analysis.

As of Friday mid-morning, H2S gas was still being detected at the site.

Officials were keeping an eye on the situation and monitoring it closely. There has been no gas detection around the perimeter of the blast zone.

The gas levels dissipated about 11:30 Friday morning.

In a media call Friday afternoon, Chatham-Kent Fire Chief Chris Case explained that crews were on scene as soon as the alarms went off.

“Our first priority was to make sure there was no gas around the perimeter and wasn’t leaking around in the evacuation zone,” he said. “For now, everything we are doing is to maintain the current evacuation zone.”

Thomas Kelly, Chatham-Kent’s General Manager of Infrastructure and Engineering Services, is certain that the build-up of gas is occurring on a regular basis.

“We believe the gas is building underground in some sort of cavern and then relieving itself,” he said.

Kelly said that their goal is to find out where that gas is emitting from and he feels that Friday’s leak will help guide them to the source.

“These last few weeks we’ve been preparing the site for when a leak may occur so we can collect gas, have it studied and learn from it,” he said. “We were able to collect our best sample yet and that will allow us to get closer to the source."

Currently the situation does not warrant any change in the evacuation area, but officials said they will notify the public immediately if that changes.