Alma Related Articles

from 75th Anniversary Edition-Empire Gas & Fuel Newsletter - 1956

Submitted by Don Adams

Alma Station
The lightning that had struck and destroyed the brick engine room of Alma Station in 1906, the flood that had overrun the boiler house and engine room in 1908 these things the Company men took in their stride.

The worst disaster came in February, 1915, in one of the cold winter months when gas demand was at a peak. A sleeve pulled apart on a line under the building. The Alma Station filled with gas. An explosion followed, practically demolishing everything. Fire finished the boiler house and the building housing the compressors.

The Clark and Norton Company, then located in Wellsville, who had built and installed the big compressor, had men on the job as soon as the heat from the fire had abated. Working day and night in the February cold, the Company employees did a remarkable thing: they had the big unit pushing gas through the lines within forty-eight hours.