Longview Power Plant on WV Route 51 near PA
Emergency evacuation for area near coal-fired power plant in Maidsville (Monongalia County) facility
From an Article by Alex Lang, Morgantown Dominion Post, January 6, 2015
Several people had to be evacuated from their homes as crews tended to a natural gas fire at Longview Power Plant on Monday (January 5th). Shortly after 2 p.m., emergency crews were called to a reported fire at the power plant, located off Fort Martin Road in Maidsville.
According to Longview Power LLC, the fire occurred at a recently installed, temporary liquefied natural gas storage system. The fire occurred during testing of the system and was located several hundred yards from the power plant. The system is used during plant startups, when pipeline gas in unavailable, Longview said.No injuries, environmental or property damage occurred, according to Longview.
As a result of the fire, responders shut down Fort Martin Road from the intersection with WV Route 100 to the state line, as they tended to the scene. Residents who lived within a mile of the plant were evacuated and told they could go to the Granville Fire Hall.
Mon County Office of Emergency Management Director Mike Wolfe said less than a dozen people were evacuated. The agency sent a phone alert that mostly went unanswered or to answering machines in the one-mile radius, which led them to believe that many people were not home at the time of the fire.
Ralph Hicks lives along Fort Martin Road and was forced to leave his home near the Fort Martin Business Park.
He said that he received a call and was told to evacuate because of an emergency at the power plant. Hicks said he wasn’t bothered by the evacuation because the smoke from the plant goes toward the state line and not toward his home.
The fire was extinguished at 3:25 p.m. and by about 4 p.m., emergency responders cleared the scene, reopened the roadway and ended the evacuation.
Another alert went out at 5:55 p.m. Wolfe said that was because of a problem with the system. The alerts end with the name Jimmy Giana. That is an abbreviated version of the name of the State Director of Emergency Management, James Gianato. The alerts only allow for a set number of characters to appear (on cell phones).
The Granville, Star City and Westover volunteer fire departments responded to the fire. Mon EMS, the West Virginia State Police and the Monongalia County Sheriff Department also assisted.
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Emergency alert glitch corrected, being called a learning lesson
From an Article of WAJR 1440 AM, www.wajr.com, January 7, 2015
When a methane tank caught fire at Longview Power Plant in Maidsville, emergency management workers had two priorities – get the fire out and warn the region of a potential emergency.
The fire was contained and fortunately did not spread within the plant. Firefighters going door to door to advise residents of the issue and calls to landlines with the same message were successfully delivered.
But, a text message sent through the Emergency Alert System has come under criticism. “I certainly wasn’t prepared, wasn’t educated and didn’t know what in the world was going on,” said a caller to WAJR’s Morgantown AM.
Cell phone users received a message advising them to “evacuate now”. The message was incomplete, lacking a specific location and details on what sparked the evacuation order. The same, vague message was received multiple times by some residents, hours after the fire was extinguished and there was no longer a risk of danger.
A federal provision requires the Emergency Alert System to utilize text alerts to warn residents of a crisis or dangerous situation. That’s in addition to the alerts many are accustomed to seeing on television and hearing on the radio.
According to Mike Wolfe, the director of the Monongalia County Office of Emergency Management and Mecca 911, this particular text alert system had never before been used in the state.
“Because of FCC rules, they’re not allowed to test that program like they do the regular tests on the radio or on the television. So, that was one of the first few times that it was ever tested or ever used here in West Virginia. And, obviously it did not work,” explained Wolfe.
Wolfe said the Mecca 911 office was immediately aware of the inaccurate, repeated text messages but was at the mercy of the state agencies that issued the messages. “I was on the phone with the state homeland security director and receiving some emails from FEMA, that they were able to figure out what it was that went wrong and that’s the positive,” said Wolfe.
The emergency at the Monongalia County power plant occurred at approximately 2:30 pm. Seven hours later, some were still receiving the texts. “That night, when I got ready to go to bed, I thought, am I going to have this signal all night long,” said the WAJR listener.
The issue, said Wolfe, has been addressed and the result is to use it as a learning lesson. “Luckily this wasn’t an incident that caused any death or injuries and we were able to find that glitch and hopefully that saved someone else.”
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An investigation is called for regarding this LNG fire
By Duane Nichols, www.FrackCheckWV.net, January 7, 2015
There are a number of questions for which the public does not have a full and adequate explanation:
- Why is there LNG being stored at the Longview power plant, a very dangerous material as it can leak, catch fire, and/or explode! (Longview has a pipeline connection for conventional natural gas supply.)
- Why was there an evacuation call for the general public but not the Longview plant personnel who continued to operate the power plant through-out the fire event?
- What is the radius of danger for this event? Was the evacuation announced to all residents within this radius? What was the information provided to those affected?
- Why was an emergency announced to the entire Morgantown area, about 4 hours after the event’s occurrence? Suppose this was a real announcement, where were all of the residents of Morgantown expected to go?
- How much liquefied natural gas (LNG) was lost to the environment, and became methane and incomplete combustion products to the atmosphere?
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