This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Questar workers finished visiting every home and business in the southeastern Utah town of Monticello on Saturday in an effort to get gas turned on after a valve problem Thursday left the entire city without natural gas.
"We are in the process of returning to homes where customers have not been home to let us in," said Questar Gas spokesman Darren Shepherd on Saturday. "We are hoping to find them available today. If we cannot get into these homes later this evening or tomorrow, we have a locksmith and two sheriff's deputies who will accompany service technicians and go into homes that had active service. We need to make sure the bas is back on. If people have a second home and no one has access, we want to get the gas back on so the heat is there and there will be no problems with freezing water lines."
Temperatures in Monticello were expected to drop to 34 degrees Saturday night and early Sunday.
Shepherd said residents began reporting problems with their service Thursday morning and technicians discovered gas pressure was low. They began going from house to house shutting off the gas and checking the system.
The problem was traced to an interstate pipeline miles away. Questar contacted the company that operates the pipeline, which corrected the problem.
Shepherd said a city wide outage was extremely rare and had never happened during the more than two decades he had been with the company. For up-to-date information, log on to http://www.questargas.com.