Erath County emergency services are a bit more prepared in the event of a pipeline leak after taking part in a drill Thursday, Nov. 14, with Colt Midstream, a natural gas gathering and processing company in the area.
“They have a lot of pipelines in our county and they have a distributing plant right outside of Huckabay on FM 219,” Erath County Fire Marshall Tommy Shelton said.
Shelton said the company had been talking to him and several fire chiefs in the county about doing an emergency drill.
“It would be something that could happen there, since they do have employees on site,” he said.
The drill that emergency services took part in was a man down with a gas leak, a realistic situation that could happen.
“They secured the area, met with the rep at the plant and rescued the victim,” Shelton said. “It was a good drill and everything went smoothly.”
Prior to the drill, there was a tabletop meeting about a month ago with a variety of Erath County Emergency services.
Huckabay VFD, Stephenville Fire Department, Erath County VFD and Lingleville VFD all participated in the drill.
“We are going to start trying to do more drills and things like this,” Shelton said.