SOUTH HADLEY — A gas leak at South Hadley breakfast and lunch joint Talk of the Town prompted fire officials to evacuate the restaurant and apartments above it on last Monday morning as a precautionary measure.
Fire officials found “very, very low level” natural gas readings at the site, said Fire District 1 Lt. Jason Houle, and “cleared all the apartments just to be safe.” The leak appeared to originate from a piece of cooking equipment, Houle said.
The gas leak was called in at 6:34 a.m., when someone at the restaurant, located at 26 Main St., detected a “faint odor of gas in the entryway,” Houle said. The person alerted one of the district’s firefighters who was at the restaurant having breakfast before work.
Fire officials turned off the gas main until the source was found, Houle said, and people were allowed back into the building by around 7:15 a.m.
Natural gas can be explosive at certain concentrations, but Houle said that the levels found at the site posed “no risk to any occupants or neighbors,” and the evacuation was a precautionary measure taken while Columbia Gas arrived and searched for the source of the leak.
Jacquelyn Voghel can be reached at jvoghel@gazettenet.com.