Crack found in gas line on property near Plum house explosion

PLUM, Pa. — The Chessey’s yard on Fieldstone Court in Rustic Ridge is ripped up. There is now an entire trench dug where a new gas line will be replaced. They live a few streets from where the deadly house explosion happened last Saturday. After the explosion, they took it upon themselves to have a technician come out and check for gas leaks. Sure enough, they had a crack in their line.

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Mary Elizabeth Chessey requires a wheelchair. She was home alone when the deadly blast rocked her tight-knit community.

“It almost blew me out of my chair, literally,” Chessey said.

Now she says she’s concerned for her safety and her family’s.

“My heart is bleeding because I’m scared,” Chessey added. “I don’t want to see what happened up there happen to us or anyone.”

The Chesseys, like so many neighbors, are concerned. They’re now encouraging other neighbors to take the same precaution they did.

“You know explosions can radiate so we figured we should take it upon ourselves,” Chessey added. “And they said they were going to come around and sort of check everybody. We didn’t see anybody. I asked my neighbor, nobody.”

Monday Peoples Gas came out and there was in fact a problem.

“She checked the meter, the meter was fine,” Shane Chessey said.  “As soon as she checked the ground, she started getting a reading. Once she cleared some dirt away, she got a bigger reading, and it went from a small fix to a bigger fix.”

When Peoples Gas came out, they put a red tag on the meter. The inlet riser was leaking at the nut where the bracket was attached.  We saw a lot of rust.  A crew tells us part of the meter was buried that should not have been so it eroded over time.

Chessey says other neighbors on his street asked the crew to check their lines too, while they were in the neighborhood.

“Several people on this street have had a leak at the inlet riser,” Chessey said. “That’s what connects the gas line to the meter.  Don’t wait for them to come to you. Call someone to check your meters. If we had waited any longer who knows what would have happened? We could not smell the gas that was leaking.”

Peoples Gas says they’re coordinating with Rustic Ridge’s HOA on the process to get the neighbor’s gas lines checked. They said after the explosion, gas was shut off to 50 homes.  Crews went door to door checking those homes before gas was restored. Peoples Gas says if you smell gas, call them, they will come out immediately.

“We just need some clear-cut honesty about what’s going on,” Chessey added.  “If it’s going to take years to determine this - that’s fine but you still have 150 + more neighbors that may not have had their gas lines checked yet.”

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