Mystery blast launches manhole covers, cracks glass

Dec 29, 2012 (The Times-Tribune - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Dave Hoffmann dropped his wife off to work at Regional Hospital of Scranton shortly before 9 a.m. Friday and turned down Vine Street to head back to his Factoryville home.

He had just stopped at a red light at Penn Avenue when he heard a boom, saw a manhole cover flip into the air and felt the front end of his Ford Edge rise as its windshield cracked.

"I thought my car blew up," he said minutes after the 9 a.m. explosion in an underground PPL Electric Utilities line.

The force of the explosion blew the covers off the manhole in front of Mr. Hoffman's car, nearest to the St. Francis of Assisi Kitchen, and dislodged another about a block down Vine Street in front of Penn Paper and Supply Co.

"It jerked the car. It jerked it up," Mr. Hoffmann said, dumbfounded. "I saw (the manhole cover) fly up." City police and fire personnel quickly responded to the scene, where they found a green-gray smoke rising from the uncovered manholes.

But as an acrid stench drifted through a crisp winter morning, most of those at the scene were as puzzled as Mr. Hoffmann.

One man walking across the intersection toward the kitchen failed even to notice the uncovered hole spewing smoke as he sipped his morning coffee and may have fallen in if not for a pair of city police officers warning him of the danger.

What caused the blast remained a mystery Friday, though crews from PPL responded to the scene and began an investigation.

What they did know was an electrical cable running underground failed and began to smolder, said PPL spokesman Rich Beasley. What caused the failure and what was ignited was unknown Friday.

"That's the question that we're trying to address," Mr. Beasley said Friday afternoon.

No one was injured in the incident, which closed a one-block radius of Vine Street and Penn Avenue for about two hours, nor did any PPL customers lose power as a result.

Despite the uncertainty, Mr. Beasley said PPL officials believe the incident to be an isolated one and did not anticipate repeat instances.

Bob Schelinski, director of operations at Penn Paper and Supply, first smelled smoke as he and his colleagues sat at computers and picked up ringing telephones.

He walked outside to take a look around just as the covers blew -- "right then there was two successive, small explosions," he said.

"I went out, the cover was blown off. You could see the flames coming out," he said, describing the flames as 5 to 10 inches high and orange and yellow.

Contact the writer: domalley@timesshamrock.com, @domalleytt on Twitter ___ (c)2012 The Times-Tribune (Scranton, Pa.) Visit The Times-Tribune (Scranton, Pa.) at thetimes-tribune.com Distributed by MCT Information Services

[ Back To Contact Center Solutions Homepage's Homepage ]

Related Contact Center Solutions Articles

MetricNet Publishes 4 New Australian Benchmarks for IT Support, Contact Centres
[ Read More ]
05/21/2013

Liverpool Bosch Contact Center Hopes for Threefold Expansion by Year End
[ Read More ]
05/03/2013

Bunchball Unveils Augmented Gamification Tools for Jive Platform
[ Read More ]
04/08/2013

Teleperformance Earns the Multimedia Contact Center Award
[ Read More ]
03/19/2013

Shangri-La Unveils Customer Contact Center in China
[ Read More ]
03/13/2013

B. Braun Uses NextiraOne for UC and Contact Center Support
[ Read More ]
03/12/2013

Contact Centre Australia Generates Job Growth in Wellington, New Zealand
[ Read More ]
03/04/2013

[ View all Contact Center Solutions Articles ]

Contact Center Solutions Glossary of Terms

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O

Featured Whitepaper

Microsoft® Lync® in the Contact Center: Integrating with Customer Interaction Center™ to Provide a Barrierâ€free Customer Experience To implement contact center functionality, organizations using Microsoft Lync Server 2010 can follow the unified communications blueprint of open standards interoperability and integrate to a contact center solution of their choice. Customer Interaction Center (CIC) from Interactive Intelligence is a proven best of breed contact center solution that merits consideration ...

Featured Success Story

Interactive Intelligence all-in-one IP communications software suite integrated with Microsoft Lync helps Bentley save $200,000 annually.

Featured Product Demo

Contact Center Solutions Interaction Analyzer™

Interaction Analyzer™
Real-time word and phrase spotting. Alerting. Analytics. Scoring. Coaching. Watch how Interaction Analyzer turns every moment, of every past and present call, into data that lets you deliver an exceptional customer experience.