Ventura residents were told to leave their homes on Sunday, for the second time this week for some, after a gas leak at a local gas station seeped into a sewer system, officials said.

The evacuations, which lasted from about 10:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m., affected between 100 and 150 residents of Ventura’s Pierpont neighborhood.

Officials said the gasoline leak occurred at a gas station and seeped into the sewer line along Monmouth Way on Thursday. Emergency crews will keep investigating the cause and the extent of the leak in the coming days.

“We have put in mitigation measures and as long as they hold, we’ll bypass that fluid and keep it out of the system,” said Ventura Water general manager Gina Dorrington. “But we also have backup plans just in case it does get by.”

Resident Terri Crandall said crews came to her house to scan for chemical levels on Sunday, when he was told that the levels were dangerously high.

“The numbers are so high,” she said. “At what point do the numbers affect our health, short term and long term? Nobody has been able to tell us that.”

Crandall and her husband, Rob, said they and neighbors haven’t felt 100% healthy in recent days, and they’re wondering if the leak is to blame.

“If it’s a toxin that we need to deal with, how do we get it out of our system,” Rob said. “Identifying the chemical would be very important to us.”

Fire authorities reiterated at a news conference Sunday that the gas levels were no longer detectible after orders were lifted, but crews will remain on scene to clean out the pipes.

Evacuation orders were initially given to the Pierpont residents on Thursday, though they were lifted before 6 p.m. that day. An additional 4,000 homes were on evacuation warning.

This hazmat incident began two days after a hazardous spill was reported in the operating room of a hospital in nearby Camarillo and five days after authorities investigated a hazmat situation at a Ventura grocery store in which an “irritant” was released, police said.

Will Conybeare contributed to this story.

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