Firemen from the Onset Fire Department responded to a call a little before 4 p.m. Sunday afternoon for a gas leak at a home on Martin Street.

Captain Jeffrey Dias said a residential gas line was struck, during some yardwork at 21 Martin St. Resident Cindy McCarthy wasn’t home, but two of her friends, who declined to be identified, said they were trying to remove a retaining wall to widen the space for her car to fit into the driveway.

“We took the retaining wall down, and were just taking the topsoil off,” one of the resident’s friends said. “The cement wall was sitting right on top of the gas line.”

He said there were only a couple inches of topsoil above the line, at best. As soon as he heard the hiss of gas, he said, he wrapped the line to prevent more gas from escaping, and called 911.

The other friend said the gas line ran at an angle, which he said was unusual, because, according to him, current building codes state that gas lines need to run straight from the house to the street. He said he is a smoker, and that it was pure luck that he wasn’t the one digging at that end of the retaining wall.

“I would have been down on my hands and knees with a cigarette hanging out of my mouth,” he said.

Dias said there was still a chance the line could have exploded, but that the two had done the right thing.

“They seemed to have slowed the flow of gas down,” Dias said. “The most important thing for us is to just check surrounding structures to make sure the gas didn’t get into the surrounding buildings.”