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| Report all utility damage |
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| Who's going to know? Scraping or nicking a buried electric conduit or natural gas pipeline might seem like a little thing. It may be tempting to look for damage, and if you don’t see a crack or hear or smell escaping gas, to bless your luck and keep on digging. DON’T DO IT! If you do, you may be taking the first step down the road to your worst nightmare.
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| Order our FREE worker safety kit on the Xcel Energy e-SMARTworkers website. |
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| Instead, stop your excavation and report any electric or natural gas line contact to Xcel Energy at 800-895-2999 immediately, even if damage is not readily apparent. If natural gas is leaking, federal law requires you to call 911 immediately. |
| Why is reporting every incident so important? |
| Nicking a buried electric conduit can cause the cable insulation inside to degrade and eventually fail, resulting in power outages and electrical shock injuries or deaths. |
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Even a minor scrape to the coating of a natural gas pipeline can cause it to deteriorate. The compromised pipe may leak, resulting in a natural gas fire or explosion and possibly loss of life and property. In addition, a pipeline that is pulled or bumped may break underground, some distance away from the initial contact point, where a gas leak may go undetected until it ignites or explodes. |
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It is equally important to report damaged tracer wire. If the tracer wire installed with plastic underground natural gas lines is broken or compromised during your excavation and not repaired, future excavators and the public are endangered because the line can no longer be located. |
| If you suspect a natural gas leak |
| Remember the three Rs of natural gas safety: Recognize, React and Report. If you RECOGNIZE any signs of a gas leak, REACT immediately by warning others and leaving the area. When you are in a safe place, REPORT the leak by calling 911 and Xcel Energy at 800-895-2999 immediately.
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| Would you like to know more? |
| Additional overhead and digging guidelines, emergency procedures, case studies, instructional videos and training tools can all be found, at no charge to you, on Xcel Energy’s e‑SMARTworkers website. |
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| To reach your state’s underground utility locate service/one‑call center, call 811 or visit their online site by clicking on your state’s name below. |
| The required “business day” wait time for each state is as follows (excludes weekends and legal holidays): |
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