A gas leak in northwest St. Albert that shut down Ray Gibbon Drive north of McKenney Avenue and south of Giroux Road was plugged Thursday afternoon, allowing roads to re-open after being closed for almost 24 hours.
Fire Chief Ray Richards said the specialized drilling crew that came in Thursday to seal the leak was able to cap it at around 1:45 p.m.
“The mud is in the hole and the cement is setting up and we are just going to continue air monitoring until 7 p.m. just to make sure everything is safe and sound.”
Giroux Road west of Ray Gibbon Drive to Range Road 260 was the last section closed, but was expected to re-open at 7 p.m. Thursday night.
An engineering firm taking core samples as part of ongoing work to expand Ray Gibbon Drive triggered the gas leak at around 10:30 a.m. Wednesday.
Richards said the leak was most likely coming from a natural pocket, probably methane gas.
“There is not much else it can be. They know it isn’t an abandoned well or a pipeline or something there.”
The fire department’s monitors tell crews a gas is explosive and the concentration level, but not the specific type. Concentrations levels at the leak started out low, but rose throughout the afternoon, prompting wider road closures.
If the concentration had continued to rise, home evacuations were a possibility, but Richards said they peaked mid-afternoon Wednesday and then fell overnight into Thursday morning.
The fire department received help from Alberta Environment and the Energy Resources Conservation Board, as well as the engineering firm in dealing with the leak and trying to determine the origin.
At its peak, the leak forced the closures of Ray Gibbon Drive, south of Giroux Road and north of McKenney Avenue and Meadowview Drive west to Range Road 260. Those roads remained closed overnight and were monitored constantly.
The engineering firm still has more drilling tests to perform for the road construction, Richards said they would now wait for information about what exactly the gas was and then develop a safety plan.
“They are going to pause and study what they need to do, work out a plan of what precautions they might need to take and get that safety plan in place before they continue drilling.”
