It's a city in the Tennessee Valley... that has real streets and houses, but you've probably never heard of it, and... few folks have ever been there. We take you to a city, within a city.. inside the city of Athens, where natural gas is the main attraction.
There's a lot of cities in the Tennessee Valley, of course you have the city of Huntsville, city of Decatur, city of Athens, but have you ever heard of Leak City?
" 8 houses total in this area. This is the leak area, where we can make leaks happen underground, in the house, different code violations an employee might see if he goes into the house," said Steve Carter Manager of the Athens Gas Department.
Gas Leaks that's what we're talking about here. Twelve to fifteen hundred gas employees from all over the nation get trained here at the Athens Gas Department each year.
" After we've done the computer based training or written training in the classroom, we come out here and give the employee the field training that he or she might need."
" Now, that's just what you would see if that station was on fire. You would have a serious situation, so you would have to have a fire department. That fire is all over the valve where we need to be. The idea is to take a fog pattern and push that fire back."
With the help of the Athens Fire department, the gas operator is able to get in there and turn off the gas. That's one of multitude of scenarios that can be set up and trained for here at Athens Gas.
" I can make it leak underground. I can make it leak like it's migrating, because natural gas is lighter than air so it's going to seek the path of least resistance. I can make it move to a water meter box. I can make it come up from the sewer."
