April is designated as National Safe Digging Month, and National Grid urges anyone who is planning on digging to call 811 to prevent serious personal injury, property damage and service interruptions caused by accidentally digging into electric, gas, telephone, water, sewer or cable facilities.
Nationally every nine minutes, an underground utility line is damaged because someone didn’t contact 811 before digging. Knowing where underground utility lines are buried before you dig will help protect you and your family from injury. With more people staying home and relying on their utilities to work and communicate, inconvenient outages are important to avoid.
State laws mandate that 811 must be contacted a few days in advance of beginning projects that require excavation. Failure to call 811 may be punishable by fines, which in some states can be as high as $1,000 for a first offense and $10,000 for subsequent offenses.