UPDATED: Route 347 Shut after Contractor Cuts Gas Main

A contractor performing work on Route 347 cut into a gas main on Wednesday, closing the highway for more than an hour and causing traffic to back up along the major northern Suffolk County's artery.

New York State Department of Transportation workers saw-cutting through old asphalt pavement in preparation for its removal ruptured a natural gas main buried close to the surface, said DOT spokeswoman Eileen Peters. The workers were using a 10-inch electrical blade, as the pavement was measured to be 9.5 inches deep.

"There was no reason to believe there was a gas line [sic] only a half-inch from the surface," Peters said.

Wendy Ladd, a spokeswoman for National Grid, said the utility was called at 11:42 a.m. to turn off a national gas main near the Veterans Highway/Route 347 split, cutting off service to 127 residential customers in the Hauppauge area.

RELATED: 127 National Grid Customers Without Gas After Accident

Suffolk County Police closed down Route 347 from the Veterans Highway interchange eastbound to the Brooksite Drive intersection at approximately 12:15 p.m., according to Peters. The eastbound lane was closed at 1 p.m., extending the closed area from the Route 347/Veterans Highway split east to the Route 111 intersection.

More than a dozen National Grid units responded to the accident, though Ladd said there was never a serious threat of fire or explosion. Rather, the company acted quickly to conserve natural gas.

Police reopened the highway at 1:51 p.m. after they felt the gas threat dissipated, according to a police spokeswoman.

National Grid units will work on site throughout the afternoon to patch the gas main.

Peters said there was no way DOT workers could have avoided the accident.

"Due to a lack of available as-built plans for utilities in this area, the gas [main] could not be properly marked out. Furthermore, this gas [main] was unusually close to the pavement surface," she said.

Peters said the accident highlights a common problem confronted by DOT workers, where there are no utility plans available to work from.

"It’s more common than people would like to know. Sometimes we have a general idea of where things are, sometimes there’s nothing available," the spokeswoman said. "We have to use extreme caution and whatever devices we have available to us."

The accident remains under investigation by the DOT.

The construction project is to transform Route 347 into a greenway by expanding the roadway and adding landscaping from. Utility crews have been working to relocate or extend existing lines underneath the roadway to accommodate its expansion over the past month.

The one-mile stretch in Hauppauge from the Route 347/454 split to the Route 111 intersection is scheduled to be completed by 2012.