What Were All Those Sirens About?

Luckily, the mass of sirens many St. Louis Park and Edina residents may have heard Wednesday afternoon were not connected with any tragedy. Rather, the noise came from Minneapolis firefighters and police officers streaming into Southwest Minneapolis' Linden Hills neighborhood to cordon off the area around a large gas leak.

According to CenterPoint Energy spokesperson Becca Virden, "weather-related" freezing and thawing in the ground displaced a 6-inch natural gas main enough to start a leak around 12:30 p.m. Shortly thereafter, a Linden Hills resident called 911 to report the smell of gas, and Minneapolis emergency crews responded. As a precaution, emergency workers evacuated 8 square blocks, from West 39th Street to West 42nd Street and from Upton Ave South to Zenith Ave South around 3:30. Virden told Patch that officials were worried about gas seeping through the soil and into the basements of nearby homes.

By 4 p.m., Centerpoint Energy crews had managed to shut off and repair the gas line, and by 6 p.m., most residents of the evacuation zone were allowed to return to their homes once the gas dissipated. Virden said that no customers lost gas as a result of Wednesday's incident

It was not immediately clear if Edina or St. Louis Park first responders provided mutual aid to their Minneapolis colleagues.