UPDATE: Residents in the Lumby area were still feeling the impact Friday of a traffic accident that happened kilometers away Thursday morning. There was a natural gas leak Thursday after a single vehicle accident sheared off an above ground valve on a natural gas line near Highway 6 and Park Lane.

So FortisBC crews could make repairs safely, the utility cut off service to Lumby customers leaving over 1,200 without natural gas at the peak of the outage. With the damaged gas line now fixed and the system reactivated crews were going door-to-door Friday to get customers back online. Fortis estimates it will be Saturday evening before they restore service to everyone.

LUMBY, B.C. – Around 1,200 customers in the Lumby area don’t have natural gas. This comes after a car crash Thursday morning in Lavington. A motor vehicle struck a high-pressure natural gas line on Highway 6, disrupting natural gas service around 9am.

The village has a heating room set up at the White Valley Community hall on Shields Avenue for residents. Charles Bloom Secondary and J.W. Ingles elementary schools are closed due to the lack of gas.

In nearby Lavington residents were told Thursday evening that the evacuation order had been lifted and that they could return home. About 65 homes and businesses in the area as well as the elementary school had been evacuated.

Once the damaged pipeline is repaired, it is reactivated and Fortis BC plans to revisit each customer to restore service to the meter and relight each natural gas appliance in the home. This may not be complete until Saturday evening.

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