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Dawson gas line rupture leads to evacuation of stores
Work crew was trying to fix a water leak
0927briefs
A crew attempting to fix a water leak ruptured a gas main Monday in the Ingles shopping center in Dawson County. Stores in the area had to be evacuated. - photo by JAMES G. WOLFE JR.

A work crew attempting to fix a water leak in the Ingles shopping center ruptured a gas main Monday afternoon, leading to the evacuation of nearby stores.

According to Dawson County Emergency Services Deputy Chief Tim Satterfield, the stores will remain evacuated for the near future.

“We’ve got a representative of Atlanta Gas and Light on scene but the construction crew is coming from Cumming, so the stores are going to be evacuated for a while,” Satterfield said Monday afternoon. “We’re not going to let anyone back in until we’re sure this is taken care of.”

Satterfield said the line was at least 2 inches in diameter.

“It’s a pretty big line,” Satterfield said. “The crew had all of the lines marked, but when they’ve lain in the ground that long, sometimes the marks are off.”

Satterfield said Monday that it didn’t look as though the crew had done anything wrong.

“They were inside where they were supposed to be,” he said. “Sometimes things like this just happen; it’s not that uncommon.”

Satterfield said the wind was helping to keep potential contamination away from the populace.

“(The gas) is really funneling straight up, so it shouldn’t be a problem,” he said. “But I expect we’ll be out here for a while.”

This Gainesville landfill could get 134-acre expansion. Here's what you need to know
Existing landfill (2).png
A map by the City of Gainesville annotated by The Times showing the planned 134-acre expansion of a privately owned landfill.
A privately owned Gainesville landfill could expand by more than 130 acres if a pair of rezoning and annexation requests gets the OK from city officials.
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