All right. Well, welcome back.
We have Lewis Panzer here today
with us from North Carolina 811,
who is here answering all
your questions about what to
know before you start digging.
And Lewis, looks like we have
a few questions here for you.
Let's start with this one.
What sorts of utilities are not
covered by North Carolina 811,
So that's a great question.
So private lines,
what we consider to be private s
or lines that are on your propey
that are not serving you from,
let's say you know, an energy company
or telecommunications company.
They solely exist on your prope.
Those are considered private lis
and those private lines will not
be marked by any of the provide.
We do have a list on our website
at nc811.org of private line
locators that provide those sers
for those types of facilities.
And the second part to that quen
and who do you, and you probably
just answered it to you contacto
find those buried lines a little bit.
Yeah, there's a bunch of differt
folks that that's what they
do is locating facilities.
And again, we maintain a list or
website of private line locators
and their contact information.
So best thing to do is look at that list,
see if there's somebody you
know a local to you reach out,
maybe get a couple of estimates
and and then you'll be able
to get those things marked.
How about this one? What happens
if I dug and I hit some utility?
So in North Carolina,
it's required that if you hit something,
you want to report the damage
both to NC811 and you can do
that by calling 811 to report i.
You also have an obligation to report
it to the actual facility that you hit.
Depending on, don't try to cover it up.
Depending on what you hit,
of course, it could be very ris.
We want people to avoid that at all costs.
Don't hit gas lines,
don't hit electric lines.
And increasingly telecommunicat,
especially with the fiber,
extremely expensive to repair and replace.
So just avoid it if you can.
But if you do strike something,
and especially if you hit a gas
line and there's a gas release,
you want to get upwind to safet.
You don't want to introduce anyd
of a spark or anything like that too.
And if the gas is flowing from ,
you call 911 first before
you do anything else.
And this question is kind of ine
same family of that previous question.
Can I get in trouble if I don't call you
guys and I've messed something up. I mean
there are, there is an actual
enforcement board in North Caroa
for folks that violate the stat.
Again, the the 811 process is covered
under a state statute with obligations
for the people who are digging and the
owners who own those facilitiesd
the notification center, which is us.
So yes, you could conceivably
be billed for the damage.
You could be fined if you were d
that you were digging without a ticket
and a complaint was filed against you.
And those those violations can
be up to $2500 per incident.
Moving into tickets, how do I check the
status of my ticket in your sys?
So that's great. So we have a tg
called positive response and you
can look that up online. You ca.
At the end of your three full business days,
you'll get an e-mail if you prod
your address to us with a list of all
those operators and what their status is.
If an operator has not responded
within the three full days,
they'll be what's called A999 code there.
And if you see that and you know that
there's something in the in the area,
we request that you contact us r
a three hour notice to give thoe
operators 3 hours to come out and mark.
That's very important that you verify
what you have on the ticket with what
is actually on the ground as we.
Look for those marks.
The operators are obligated to
put their ID down on the marks,
so you'll see a code on each of those
tickets for each of those membe.
You want to try to match that code to
what's on the ground to make sure that
everybody has indeed marked or d
you that they were not in confl.
And if you can answer this
in just 15 seconds, maybe.
How long are tickets valid for?
When when someone makes a reque,
15 seconds is perfect.
They're valid for 15 working da.
If your work is going to
extend past 15 working days,
we ask that you update the tickt
three days prior to that thing
expiring so you can keep a valid
a live ticket for your work.
All right, Louis, thank you so .
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