Transcript Staff

Firefighters and ONG crews were responding to a ruptured 12-inch gas transmission line near 48th Avenue NW and Tecumseh Road shortly before 10 a.m. today.

Traffic was diverted on 48th Avenue and Tecumseh Road. Students were being kept inside at Roosevelt School. Children in the portable classrooms were ushered into the main building.

The line break is south of Tecumseh Road and just east of 48th Avenue NW. Firefighters evacuated nearby Hillview Drive and were setting up gas monitoring equipment in the Roosevelt school’s parking lot.

Jim Dembowski, a Norman resident who lives about a mile north of the break, said he could hear the rush of the escaping gas from his home. A construction crew apparently struck the line while working with a bulldozer in the area this morning.

Emergency crews closed Tecumseh Road between 36th Avenue NW and 48th Avenue NW and 48th Avenue NW between Rock Creek Road and Tecumseh Road.

Oklahoma Natural Gas spokesman Don Sherry said crews were figuring out where to best shut off the flow of gas through the line in order to make repairs.

He said the line supplies natural gas to Norman and Oklahoma City customers. He does not anticipate any significant supply problems for the area. Sherry said the rupture is unrelated to the current gas pipeline project under way in Norman.