BARRE, Vt. -
Officials from the DEC and a consultant company that is working on cleaning a gas leak in Barre have estimated just how for the leak spread.
"It's several hundred feet and maybe a 100, 150 feet wide," Hazmat specialist Richard Spiese said.
The gas leak spread for several weeks from its origin at North End Deli Mart. It got into the soil, the sewer and the smell even invaded people's homes through sewer pipes pipes and started disturbing their lives.
"One individual expressed how she couldn't eat for quite a period of time," Spiese said.
Another described how it gave her daughters migraines.
"After work they come here and not long after they have headache," Lioni Vallaincourt said at her home near the gas station leak.
The DEC and the clean up consultant agency installed vaccums in several peoples basements to eliminate the odor the same you can smell out on the street.
"I think mostly what we're smelling right now is the petroleum that's coming up out of the sewer. there's very high levels coming up out of there those were the vapors that were getting into people's homes," Spiese said.
The vaccums will be there for about a week just like the drills outside the gas station.
Besides getting the smell out of people's basements crews are also working to get the contamination out of the ground.
"The shorter term mitigation that we're trying to accomplish is stop the pathway from the petroleum getting into the sewer," Spiese said.
Long term crews will be working to cleanup this three thousand gallon leak for years.
"Anytime people have vapors in their homes that they're exposed to and we have high levels of petroleum in the sewer that's a serious situation and that's why you see so much work occurring so quickly," Spiese said.
