Condo residents say ONG fixed one issue but caused others

Residents at the Benttree Condos in Northwest Oklahoma City say they’ve been in a months-long battle with Oklahoma Natural Gas. 

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) - Residents at the Benttree Condos in Northwest Oklahoma City say they’ve been in a months-long battle with Oklahoma Natural Gas. 

Patsy Hooten, who lives at Benttree, told KFOR that a few years ago ONG informed the complex’s management that the gas meters inside residents' closets needed to be moved. 

“They posed a safety risk and so they had to move them out of the closet,” said Hooten. 

ONG moved the meters outside. That project wrapped up last fall. However residents say fixing one issue, just caused more. 

"There's all the paintings all over the sidewalks,” said Hooten. “When they were working, they cut several of our sprinkler lines and we had to pay privately to repair our sprinkler lines." 

Hooten said that repair cost more than $2,000. 

She adds ONG tore up and replaced the sidewalks while moving the meters and now the surface is uneven. 

"The pool's about to open, of course someone's going to slip,” said Hooten.

Benttree residents say their breaking point was last week. According to Hooten, during an emergency one resident called for help and a stretcher couldn’t fit through an entryway where two meters were placed. 

"They couldn't get the fellow out of there,” said Hooten. 

Eventually Hooten said first responders moved a car out of the resident’s garage and were able to get him out through the garage and loaded onto the ambulance. 

"It could have been a whole lot worse,” said Hooten. “If that person had been having a heart attack, they'd be dead by now."

Hooten said she and her neighbors reach out to ONG once a month. 

"We get some sort of communication that, ‘Oh, well, we're going to open a ticket,’" said Hooten. “They haven't been on property since last October." 

That’s why she turned to KFOR for help. 

“One of the board members said, ‘Call in your corner,’" said Hooten. “Sometimes when you're dealing with the people that aren't doing the work, you have to go around them and go above them and pressure them to make things right."

Oklahoma Natural Gas sent News 4 the following statement in response to Benttree residents' concerns.

At Oklahoma Natural Gas, safety is our top priority. While we cannot share information about a specific customer, our crews respond promptly to every safety issue. If we find an issue, we either inform the customer that repairs must be made before their service can be restored or work with the customer to complete the work safely.  
 
To provide background, we completed work at this complex earlier this year. Currently, there are no outages at the complex and the system is operating safely. 

We take every customer issue to heart and do our best to respond. We were first contacted about the sidewalk this week and are working with the complex to better understand the concern.
 
As a reminder, we encourage any customer who suspects a natural gas leak or emergency to leave the area immediately and then call 911 and 800-458-4251. 

Oklahoma Natural Gas