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Improper drilling mix caused foul odor on Youngstown's N. Side
By Ed Runyan
YOUNGSTOWN
A natural-gas drilling company that hit an unexpected gas pocket at 10 p.m. Friday near V&M Star sent a nontoxic cloud of fumes into the air on Youngstown’s North Side, East Side and into Girard.
“It wasn’t toxic. It was just an irritant,” said Silverio Caggiano, battalion chief with the Youngstown Fire Department and deputy chief of the Mahoning County Hazardous Materials team.
“Some things smell long before it can hurt you,” Caggiano said.
A crew from D&L Energy was drilling for gas on V&M property near the former Sharp Lumber property on U.S. Route 422 near the Youngstown-Girard border when the rig hit the pocket at about 4,000 feet down, Caggiano said.
The rig was vertical drilling, not horizontal drilling for Marcellus Shale, Caggiano noted.
The company didn’t have the right mixture of solids, liquids and brine water — known as slurry — to prevent the fumes from coming out of the well, and the fumes were released into the air, Caggiano said.
Because of the humid conditions, the smell hung over the Brier Hill area and spread south and north, resulting in numerous calls to 911 through the night from residents wondering what the smell was.
The smells also alarmed employees at St. Elizabeth Health Center, who wondered whether the hospital should be evacuated, but that was not necessary because the hospital has an air-filtration system that can keep smells out, Caggiano said.
Anyone with a lung condition, such as emphysema or asthma, was advised to keep windows closed or relocate for the night, Caggiano said.
Drilling-rig workers fixed the slurry mixture by about 5 a.m., and by about 8 a.m., the smell was gone, Caggiano said.
The Girard Fire Department responded to numerous calls overnight from concerned residents who smelled the problem, said Capt. Tim O’Brien of the Girard Fire Department.
The department tested the air in areas where callers reported the problem, and nothing dangerous was detected, he said.
Girard residents are especially concerned about gas, O’Brien noted, because of the natural-gas explosion that destroyed a home on Washington Street in September 2008.