Months after a gas outage on Charleston’s West Side, a bill to keep residents informed of interruptions died in the Senate

Months after the natural gas outage residents of Charleston’s West Side community say they are still frustrated about the lack of communication about the crisis.

“It just felt very… like they did not care,” said Sydney Delaney, who lives on Madison Street on the West Side.

A one-paragraph bill that would have required utilities to better inform customers during emergency and scheduled service interruptions gained momentum before being pulled from a Senate committee agenda and dying.

For Delaney, November 10, 2023 was just another Friday. She went to work that morning as usual. Her fiancé Scott Strader, stayed at home nursing a knee injury. When he woke up mid-morning, the house was cold.

“I had it set at 72 but it was getting colder,” he said. As the day progressed, the house wasn’t getting warmer. So he checked the furnace and realized it wasn’t working.

“I said, wait, there’s something wrong here,” he said. He hadn’t heard from Mountaineer Gas. No texts. No email alerts. No phone calls. He finally found out there was a community-wide gas outage when he called the company at about 8 p.m., and heard an automated message.

That morning, a water main burst a few blocks away from the home Strader and Delaney share. The water flow punctured an adjacent Mountaineer Gas pipeline, according to public documents filed by the company with the state Public Service Commission.

Water flooded the gas main, interrupting service for hundreds of people. Charleston Mayor Amy Goodwin said that 1,100 households were affected.

Still, it would be almost three days after the main rupture until Strader and Delaney would learn exactly why they didn’t have any heat. Delaney said that neither the company or elected officials informed the community of the outage or the reason for it.

“We, as the community here, had to inform each other,” Delaney said.

They also weren’t notified on how long the repair was going to take and when the service would be restored.

Moses Skaff, Mountaineer Gas’ senior vice president, said that while the company is currently in the process of changing their notification systems, in the past communication with all customers was a challenge because the company does not require an email to sign up for their service.

“We are in the process of working through our internal systems to ensure that we can come up with a good plan for future communications to our customers,” he said.

Another challenge for the notification process was that some customers were renters and the service was under the landlord’s name. However, Skaff said daily press releases were sent out with time frames for the repairs and restoration of service.

After having an experience similar to Strader and Delaney, Del. Mike Pushkin, a Democrat from Kanawha County who lives on the West Side, found out about the gas outage in the news.

Pushkin said he awoke on Nov. 11 not feeling well, and his house was cold.

“I was shaking, I was in pretty bad shape,” he said. “I started to take my dogs outside that morning, and had a conversation with one of my neighbors from across the street and he said that his was out too. So then I got on my phone and just looked up the news and that’s how I found out, from the news.”

This legislative session, Pushkin introduced HB 4010 , a bill that would mandate utility companies notify their customers of outages, both scheduled or unexpected. The bill would further require that companies “provide an estimated length” of the disruption and that customers constantly be updated with progress.

For Pushkin, it was the “lowest hanging fruit” issue which originated from the outage. He also said that it would be common sense that a utility company would communicate with their customers.

“In most cases they are, but what we found out with the gas, is that they aren’t,” he said. “We all woke up that morning, that Saturday morning, on the West Side, and our heat wasn’t working, and we didn’t know why, because nobody told us.”

Mountaineer Gas is already working with Pushkin’s bill, despite it not passing, in order to remedy the communication deficiency that arose from the November gas outage, according to Skaff.

The bill passed the House unanimously, and was sent to the Senate Government Organization Committee. Chairman Jack Woodrum, R-Summers, put it on the agenda for a late February meeting but took it off, saying later it needed more work.

“It was a little broad,” Woodrum said. Woodrum also questioned the need for the bill, saying he thought utility companies were already communicating with customers about service interruptions.

He also said that if the communication issue is not resolved by next session, he will introduce his own bill in the Senate, while Pushkin reintroduces his version in the House.

For Delaney, the effects of the incident continue.

She began experiencing headaches and nausea after waking up from a nap. She went to the hospital where she was told she had carbon monoxide poisoning. She said she was hospitalized for four days. Delaney said she’s still having trouble with focusing and fogginess.

As Delaney and Strader continue to deal with the repercussions of the gas outage, they want the utility companies and elected officials to be accountable for not informing the community.

“They need to make sure that we know beforehand,” Delaney said. “Don’t email certain people and not others. We’re not just nobody over here.”

Months after a gas outage on Charleston’s West Side, a bill to keep residents informed of interruptions died in the Senate appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight , West Virginia's civic newsroom.