Dec. 15--TUNKHANNOCK -- Communication failures left some emergency agencies uninformed when a Monroe Twp. natural gas dehydration station allowed more than 5 million cubic feet of gas to vent loudly into the atmosphere the morning after Thanksgiving, officials said Friday during a meeting at the Wyoming County Emergency Management Agency office.
Those "unacceptable" communication gaps have been identified and largely fixed, officials said, but they acknowledged that more needs to be done to inform residents whether a situation is dangerous or simply startling.
"If a resident comes to me and says, 'Were we in danger?' and my answer to that is, 'I don't know, and I didn't know,' that is totally unacceptable," Wyoming County EMA Director Eugene Dziak said.
The loud venting happened at about 3 a.m. on Nov. 23 at PVR Partners' Chapin dehydration station on Route 309 near the border of Monroe Twp. in Wyoming County and Dallas Twp. in Luzerne County. The facility is used to strip moisture from gas as it travels from Marcellus Shale wells into interstate pipelines.
It was the third but longest such event since the station was installed, residents at the meeting said.
In the early hours of Black Friday, Luzerne County 911 dispatched the Kunkle Volunteer Fire Company to the site but did not notify the emergency management agency in Wyoming County, where the station is located. That slowed notification of other agencies, including the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, Public Utility Commission and Department of Environmental Protection, officials at the meeting said.
A protocol is now in place to make sure notifications happen across counties and agencies, Mr. Dziak said.
The public meeting Friday included state Rep. Karen Boback, R-117, Harveys Lake, and state Sen. Lisa Baker, R-20, Lehman Twp., as well as representatives from state and county emergency management agencies, environmental and utility regulators, area fire and police departments, county commissioners and township officials. PVR Partners was invited to the meeting but declined, officials said.
The fact-finding session followed an earlier private meeting to address communication gaps that included many of the same people and PVR representatives.
Officials at the Friday meeting identified other communication obstacles on Nov. 23. When Kunkle fire crews asked Luzerne County 911 to contact PVR, the county found that it did not have numbers for the company, Kunkle Fire Chief Jack Dodson said. A PVR worker arrived about 20 minutes after fire crews and stopped the venting.
Company representatives have said that no one was in danger during the incident, but fire department and DEP officials said Friday that they could not be certain because there was limited air monitoring at the site during the release.
Both the PUC and DEP are investigating the cause of the release and the response. The PUC also plans to inspect PVR's compliance with its public notification obligations.
Officials emphasized that residents who suspect an emergency hazard at the station should call 911 first.
Chief Dodson said the fire company will set up a command post at its station with phone numbers residents can call for information during any future incident.
In a "true emergency," firefighters will sound the siren at the fire station and try to go house to house to alert residents, he said.
Ms. Baker suggested that PVR begin a reverse 911 system to convey "timely, direct" information to residents about releases from the station.
"The public education component ... was woefully inadequate and continues to be," she said.
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Copyright 2012 - The Times-Tribune, Scranton, Pa.
