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Riverside residents evacuated from a Casa Blanca neighborhood Thursday morning, June 30, returned to their homes following a gas leak that had chased them out.

Just past 8 a.m. workers with the water division of Riverside Public Utilities hit an unmarked gas line in the 7800 block of Evans Street, the Riverside Fire Department said.

By around 11:30 a.m., the Riverside Office of Emergency Management said the leak had been “mitigated.”

The leak had prompted firefighters to evacuate two dozen homes along Evans Street, between Jefferson and Grace streets.

Others in the area, who weren’t evacuated, were given a shelter-in-place order and asked to close their windows and doors.

Rose Fuentes, 32, and Daniel Rangel, 33, said they smelled gas at around 8:15 a.m. as they were getting ready to take their 3-year-old son to school.

“You can see the gas and you can smell it, too,” Rangel said.

The couple soon received an emailed alert from the city saying a gas leak had occurred.

After the leak, a Southern California Gas crew shut off the pipeline. A spokeswoman said Thursday that workers needed to make permanent repairs before gas service could be restore to the neighborhood.

The spokeswoman said 26 customers were affected. She said the crew was working on the pipeline Thursday but did not give a timeline for when service would be restored.

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