The main contractor on the state Route 18 widening project said the gas line a road worker broke Wednesday wasn't where it was supposed to be.

"The 2-inch gas line was off by 2 feet,'' said Steve Bucci, superintendent for Lindy Inc. When the road crew began digging at the section near Hermitage Middle School, Bucci said, the National Fuel Gas Distribution Corp. gas line was supposed to be 2 feet lower than it was.

Like other highway projects, road construction plans for widening Route 18 were given to utility companies with lines in the area so they could move them, Bucci said.

"You never know how things like that happen,'' Bucci said. "Maybe (plans) for that particular area didn't get to the person it was supposed to get to.''

An NFG spokesperson told the Herald Wednesday that the line was broken when "a contractor" relocating lines hit the main line. 0NFG moved gas lines along the 2.5-mile section of highway last winter in preparation for the road widening, both the utility and Lindy said.

NFG, which owns and is responsible for maintaining the line, said it will send an investigator to determine what led to the gas break.

"Until he investigates, we won't know what factors led to the line being hit,'' said NFG spokeswoman Sandra James. "If depth (of the line) was an issue, he'll look into that.''

Regardless, an engineer for PennDOT, which is overseeing the project, said this is the last section of the highway that calls for the kind of digging that led to the line break.

"By tomorrow we should be done excavating completely on the whole project,'' Bill Hanson, a PennDOT civil engineer, said Thursday. "The chances of another line being hit on the Route 18 project after that will be slim to none.''

About 1,600 Hermitage School District students from the middle and elementary schools were evacuated for about 30 minutes after the line broke this week. Last week Hermitage students were evacuated for about as long when a similar break occurred.

Several other line breaks have accompanied the project, which began in earnest earlier this year.