Did you know that every six minutes, an underground utility line is damaged in the United States?
There are more than 20 million miles of underground utilities in the United States. To put that into perspective, that means that there are more than an entire football field’s length of buried utilities for every single person in the United States. Odds are that today, you’ve already walked or driven over land with buried utilities underneath.
These lines may power our communities, delivering gas and electricity. Sewer and water lines also lay below the surface. In some areas, the lines we used to communicate with our loved ones are buried underground.
Digging around these utility lines is dangerous and puts your entire community at risk. When an underground line is struck, the best outcome is costly repairs. The worst outcome is deadly.
So how can you avoid striking underground utilities? There are two major ways to prepare before you dig.
Call Before You Dig
Making a call to 811 is the simplest way to keep your community safe. When you call 811 before digging, you reduce the chance of striking a buried utility line to less than 1%.
A few days before digging, call 811 from anywhere in the country. Your call will be rerouted to a local call center. The operator will ask a few questions about your project, like what type of work you’ll be doing and where you plan to dig. This conversation will only take a few minutes, but remember, it can save lives!
Next, the operator will notify utility companies in the area of your plans. Each utility company will send a locator to mark the approximate location of your underground utility lines. This process typically takes up to three working days. Once the marks are placed, respect them! Dig carefully around them with care.
Decrease Risk with Vacuum Excavation Trucks
Another way to avoid disrupting underground utilities is to use a vacuum excavation truck for the job. Our non-mechanical, non-destructive, minimally disruptive and precise TRUVAC vacuum excavators allow you to safely and easily visually locate underground utilities.
This advantage protects the people on your team and those in your community. It also keeps infrastructure safe and boosts productivity in tolerance zones.
TRUVAC’s Paradigm is one of the most innovative and versatile vacuum excavation trucks on the market today. Customer-inspired and built to satisfy even the most stringent safe-digging requirements, the Paradigm is compact, low-profile, multi-purpose and tough.
Interested in seeing the Paradigm in action? Click here to schedule your free demo!