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Oct 13, 2008 6:35 pm US/Central
No Gas Service Until Mobile Home Gas Pipes Fixed
Seema Mathur
HALTOM CITY (CBS 11 News) ―
Some residents at a Haltom City mobile home fear they are living with a 'ticking time bomb'. They claim there are illegal gas pipes under the property and right now people are scrambling to find the money to fix the problem.
For the past two weeks Maria Calero has been heating water on her electric stove for her family's bath. "The gas is very dangerous and maybe cause explosion," she explained.
Maria can't afford to fix the faulty gas pipe and was shocked to learn her family has been living with a safety hazard.
The pipes at Maria's home, like 14-others in the Ponderosa Mobile Home Park, have exposed flex-line piping, instead of the code required hard pipe lines for natural gas.
"Any little bump or anything could have caused an opening on them," said Haltom City official Roy Castro. "It's something that alarmed us and moved us to enforce the plumbing code."
Despite the fact that many of the mobile homes in the park were built in the 1950's, city inspector's say of new code enforcement efforts led them to notice the safety hazard. "In this case trailers were brought in when codes were not really enforced, or lack of codes at that time," Castro said. "As we come to these, and we see them, we will address them."
The out-of-town property owner says he's had inspections before and is unsure why the code violation is being brought up now.
The city says fixing each individual gas line is the shared responsibility of the property owner and the mobile home owner/renter. Regardless, until the problems are fixed there will be no gas service for residents.
That's going to be a problem for Maria. "I don't have money now, so I need to wait," she said.
Residents say estimates to fix the individual gas pipes range from $450-$1,000 and they hope they can get the money for repairs before winter.
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