-[Natasha] Sherry Walls and her family live in Ponca City,
close to the reservation and even closer to the big refinery.
In 2013 her gas company detected a methane leak in her home.
-[Sherry] They told us to be on standby
to leave at any moment during the night.
-[Natasha] What were they so worried about?
-[Sherry] Explosion?
-[Natasha] Methane is so flammable
that it can blow a home to bits.
This is her husband, Chris, soon after the leak was discovered.
-[Chris] They're telling me I won't have gas
until I got zero readings for five consecutive days.
Is that going to happen seven years from now?
I really doubt it.
It's hard.
-[Natasha] The problem was so bad that they had to move out.
The Oklahoma Corporation Commission,
the state agency that regulates the oil and gas industry,
investigated Sherry's case.
Officials suspected the leak
was coming from an abandoned oil well,
of which there could be tens of thousands across the state.
In Sherry's situation, they couldn't find it.
-[Sherry] They dug up my yard.
I can't even tell you how many times
they've dug up my driveway.
-[Natasha] Sherry and her family of five
were left bouncing back and forth
from hotels to rentals for nearly three years.
-[Sherry] We were already having financial issues.
My husband had had four knee surgeries.
We kept running into brick walls.
-[Natasha] Her husband kept track of the days
they were displaced from their homes.
In an act of desperation,
he even dug a hole in one of the bedrooms,
hoping to find the leak himself.
This is him using a home gas detector.
[beeping]
-[Natasha] As one of their last resorts,
the Walls reached out to the states chief lawyer.
-[Sherry] I called our attorney general,
Scott Pruitt's office and this is the letter we got back.
There was a complaint form that we filled out
and had to return to their office.
-[Natasha] so you called them,
they sent you this to fill out a form.
You filled out the form?
-[Sherry] Yes. -[Natasha] And what happened?
-[Sherry] Nothing. I never heard from them again.
-[Natasha] You never heard
from the attorney general's office again.
-[Sherry] Nothing.
-[girl] What's your name?
-[Natasha] But then, a year and a half later,
it seemed like their luck was changing.
The corporation commission decided to install a ventilator.
-[Sherry] This is the switch
that will turn the ventilation system on.
-[Natasha] The Walls moved back in
and thought everything would return to normal.
But not so fast.
-[Sherry] It was making us all sick.
You know, headaches.
I started talking to my neighbors and they were saying
they were getting headaches.
-[Natasha] We met up with Sharon, from Earth Works,
at Sherry's house to get her take on the ventilator.
-[Natasha] So she's turning on her camera.
Wow. Is this unusual to you?
What do you see here?
-[Sharon] I've never seen anything like this on a house.
Yeah, I would say that's unusual.
This is something like you would see at an oil and gas facility.
-[Natasha] The camera can't tell exactly what's coming out.
It could be methane or something else,
but I started feeling sick.
You can smell it.
-[Sherry] It usually don't smell that bad.
I can't take no more.
My husband and I...
this was our home and...
I just can't imagine leaving it but I can't...
keep my family in here getting poisoned.
-[Natasha] After four years of their ordeal,
Sherry says the added stress was too much for her husband.
On father's day, two months before we visited Sherry,
he committed suicide.
-[Sherry] I think that a lot of what happened
with my husband, losing my husband,
had a lot to do with this house.
-[Chris] Blow it!
-[Sherry Walls] We were all exposed for all these years.
[laughing]