1.4.3 Columbia Gas Emergency Response
About the same time the Columbia Gas controller was talking to the Cabot controller, a Columbia Gas corrosion specialist heard a radio news report of a 200-foot fireball in Sissonville while he was driving to a Columbia Gas field office in Ripley, West Virginia. He called a corrosion technician at 12:53 p.m. and asked the technician to send an emergency text message to the Columbia Gas East Operations manager, alerting him of the reported fire.
The East Operations manager was in transit about 21 miles from the accident site. The East Operations manager told investigators that as he was reading the emergency text, he received a phone call from the corrosion specialist, who told him, “I think we’ve got a failure at I-77 crossing.” The East Operations manager began driving toward the accident site. The time was about 12:56 p.m. The technician also told him that several personnel at the Lanham compressor station were en route to close all the compressor station discharge valves to the SM-80 system.16
At 1:09 p.m., the East Operations manager called the Lanham mechanic and told him to close everything on the discharge side of the station and to notify him once all the valves were closed. He said to close all the valves because they did not yet know which of the three lines had ruptured. The Lanham isolation valves included four power-operated valves and two manual valves. The mechanics told NTSB investigators that it took about 15 minutes to close all six valves.17