Emergency crews responded to UC Santa Barbara Monday afternoon for a report of a gas leak. A handful of graduate student housing buildings were evacuated.
Emergency crews responded to UC Santa Barbara Monday afternoon for a report of a gas leak. A handful of graduate student housing buildings were evacuated. Credit: Courtesy Keena Hatsell

A handful of UC Santa Barbara graduate student residence buildings were briefly evacuated Monday afternoon after a third-party contractor “struck and damaged an underground two-inch plastic natural gas service line,” according to university officials and the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.

UCSB first issued an evacuation notice to graduate student residence halls along the 6500 block of El Colegio Road near Isla Vista around 2 p.m.

The notice included all of the residences within San Clemente Village, as well as the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) residence, according to an emergency alert sent out from the UCSB Police Department.

UC Santa Barbara ordered the evacuation of a handful of graduate student residence buildings Monday afternoon.
UC Santa Barbara ordered the evacuation of a handful of graduate student residence buildings Monday afternoon. Credit: Courtesy Keena Hatsell

Community members were also asked to avoid El Colegio Road, the Los Carneros Bike Tunnel and the bike path along El Colegio Road.

Evacuations were lifted around 3:30 p.m. Monday, and the Southern California Gas Company was on the scene for repairs, according to a university alert.

Emergency crews first responded to the incident around 1:40 p.m.

No injuries were reported.

Noozhawk intern Nestor Manzanares contributed reporting from the scene.

— Noozhawk South County editor Evelyn Spence can be reached at espence@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.