GREENWOOD, Texas — Homeowners in Greenwood were able to return to their homes around 11 a.m. Wednesday morning after the Targa gas plant leak caused them to be evacuated late Tuesday night.
Anyone within a one-mile radius of the plant was urged to evacuate the area.
While it did not take long before it was safe for residents to re-enter their homes, it did take some time for fire departments to let them know they had to evacuate in the first place.
"I would like to be able to contact the citizen directly and say, 'Hey, you're good to go in," said Midland County Emergency Management Coordinator Justin Bunch.
The Greenwood gas plant leak was taken care of efficiently and effectively. However, it was the notifying the residents that took longer than expected.
"It is an issue I found that from our side we do these evacuations, we don't do a good job of capturing contact information for residents," Bunch said. "What I was working on was a way to do that where we can either send out like with the deputies, a QR code where they can you know scan it and put their name and we have that contact information."
Emergency responders had to go door to door to let residents know what was going on at the plant late Tuesday night. Bunch said they do it out of an abundance of caution and for the protection of the citizens.
"Our number one priority is to ensure the safety of the community," Bunch said. "We're out there, you know, we're out there all night. We don't want to have to make people leave their homes. But if we do it out of safety, I mean we do it."
Bunch has been working on a new QR system for the area that should help in future situations.
"We're on the process of getting IPAWS [Integrated Public Alert and Warning System], which is the same thing like your weather alerts and amber alerts to where the city and county can, you know, do a geofence in that mile area that we wanted and contact everybody's cell phone," Bunch said.
In any residential area, it is necessary that they have a functional communication system. Hopefully within a few months, that will be the reality for Greenwood residents.