PAINESVILLE TOWNSHIP, OH — At least five municipalities halted underground drilling by utility companies after Thursday's gas leak and explosion in Twinsburg Township that damaged three dozen homes including three which were destroyed.
Twinsburg, Hudson, Stow and Green all announced the cities halted all directional drilling following the explosion.
Twinsburg Township announced Friday it was pausing all digging in township rights-of-way "due to the investigation still being underway and not knowing the cause, responsible party(ies), and corrective measures needed," said Township Manager Rob Kager in a statement to News 5 Investigators.
Just before 3:30 p.m. Thursday, a contractor installing fiber optic cable in The Woodlands subdivision called 911 reporting crews hit a gas line.
"They think it was a service [line]," the caller told a dispatcher. "But you can definitely smell it."
Firefighters said the gas leak then ignited setting off an explosion and fires on Hiram Lane.
"It sounded like a bomb went off," said a woman to a 911 dispatcher. "My whole house shook."
The damage stretched across at least three streets in the subdivision, but in what Twinsburg Fire Department Chief Earl Wilson called a miracle, only two people suffered minor injuries.
While the chief admitted investigators may never know what ignited the gas, he said the state fire marshal's office and public utilities commission are looking at how the contractors hit that gas line.
Neighbors said underground utilities were marked before crews began working in the neighborhood Monday.
"There were crews on every street, groups of five to five guys digging," said Steve Apple who lives one street from where the explosion happened.
In a statement Friday, a spokesman for Uniti, the fiber optic company laying the cable, confirmed a subcontractor working for the company struck the gas line and wrote, "based on our initial findings, we believe this damage was the result of inaccurate markings of underground utilities by a third-party utility locating service."
Twinsburg's fire chief said he could not put a timeline on the state's investigation into the explosion.
In the meantime, some living near the devastation said they supported the pause on utility work until more is known about what went wrong.
"I'd hate to see this happen again, this is bad," said Apple. "These people lost everything yesterday. Their homes, their memories. Everything. It's gone."
