A shelter-in-place was imposed in Tacoma.
A broken pipeline prompted a shelter-in-place order in Washington’s Tacoma. Residents were advised to not flock into public areas through an alert. The incident happened Wednesday morning on 4th Street and L Street and led to a quick response from the Tacoma Fire Department.
The crews rushed to the site where the gas pipeline broke after they received reports about the incident at 08:58 am, per local time, early in the morning. The Fire Department officials accompanied by PSE when they arrived on scene.
The Tacoma Fire Department informed that the issue (ie gas leak problem) was corrected. It mentioned the details of the incident in a post on Facebook, nearly two hours after the gas leak happened. Meanwhile. an emergency alert was sent to the public in Washington city asking people to “temporarily shelter in place with a targeted notification area of 1/4 mile of the site.”
The gas leak was resolved and the temporary shelter in place was later lifted, the Fire Department’s statement further added.
“We are now aware that the alert went far beyond the intended radius and we are currently looking into what caused that to happen so we can avoid this in the future. We acknowledge that this error has had an impact on a large number of residents, organizations and businesses, and for that we sincerely apologize,” the statement by the Tacoma Fire Department read concluding on an optimistic note that a similar incident does not occur again.
It is not yet known what actually led to the gas pipeline in the early hours. An investigation is currently underway.
