News Story # 3

Yesterday at least 100 employees, neighborhood residents, business owners, and customers were evacuated from an area south of Market in San Francisco after a private construction crew severed a 2-inch underground gas pipe with a backhoe. The police have cordoned off the streets around Folsom and eleventh Street shutting down a four-block radius causing a back-up in traffic. One of the people affected by the gas pipe break was Carlann Lauria; a store manager at Crocker's Lockers which is a self-storage company on Folsom near tenth Street. She says her customers were pretty irate about the situation. Lauria's employees were kept busy as they went outside the police perimeter to collect payment checks from their customers.

Another business manager in the area is Samantha Feldman of Wa-Ha-Ka restaurant, who says her employees and patrons were forced to leave. The restaurant is located at the corner where the construction crew had been working. The shutdown caused Feldman's restaurant to lose about five-hundred dollars worth of business. After several attempts to get in touch with PG&E, a representative said the gas has been turned back on.