Electricity is cut off. Guards sit in cars on every corner. Hundreds of people are out of their homes, some without access to their clothing or belongings.
And officials are frantically working to unravel the grim mystery of what exactly caused a gas explosion in August in Wheatley, Ontario — and how to prevent another explosion from happening.
More than four months after the blast shuttered Wheatley’s downtown and injured 20 of the town’s 2,900 residents, authorities still don’t know where the gas leak came from or why it happened.
Residents and local officials are examining the risks associated with the town’s history as a site of 19th-century gas wells, vestiges of the area’s oil and gas industry.
