Workers in Wisconsin who must dig into ground to perform their jobs should be educated and trained by their employers about how to properly do so in order to avoid hitting and disturbing gas lines or causing other problems. Companies have a responsibility to safety at all times for their workers and even for their subcontractors and others in an area that may be affected by any dangerous incidents.
Today there are many more questions than answers about what exactly happened to cause a gas line explosion in Sun Prairie. The incident occurred in an area in which TDS Telecom had been working on some fiber optic cables for a while but reports from CBS 58 Milwaukee indicate that this work may not have been involved in the explosion. Other work was being conducted by a company called Bear Communications for the communications giant, Verizon.
However, Bear Communications has apparently indicated that none of its direct employees were involved in the gas leak nor where at the location when the explosion happened on a Tuesday evening. Instead, employees of a Bear Communications subcontractor, VC Tech, were working at the time that someone smelled gas and began working to get people out of the area and report the smell to authorities.
It is not known how many people were working on the site at the time or what may have caused the leak. One firefighter died in the explosion and other people were injured but no details about who those injured parties are have been released.
