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| Welcome to National Grid’s Tips of the Trade. National Grid is committed to your safety, and
these tips are intended to help you work safely near our facilities. Please review these tips
with your coworkers at your tailgate or toolbox meetings before work begins. |
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| Report all utility damage |
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| Who’s going to know? |
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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. |
| Instead, stop your excavation and report any electric or gas line contact to National Grid immediately, even if damage is not readily apparent.
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| 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 electric 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.
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| 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 National Grid any time, day or night, at the appropriate emergency number below. |
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| For more contractor safety information, visit ngridsafety.com. |
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| Call 811 or enter an online request at least 72 hours before digging in Massachusetts and Rhode Island (excluding weekends and legal holidays) and at least two full working days in New York (excluding the date of your call, weekends and legal holidays).
It’s the law! |
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| To report emergencies, call 911 and National Grid immediately. |
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