County officials ordered a brief evacuation of nearly the entire town of Middleton, Idaho, late Thursday morning after a gas pipeline explosion.

A worker ruptured a 22-inch pipeline with an excavator, the Associated Press reported, leading to the order to evacuate the town of roughly 10,600 people roughly 33 miles west of Boise.

Canyon County officials announced the evacuation in a post to X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, at about 11:20 a.m. local time.

Within about 20 minutes, the gas line had been turned off, according to a follow-up post, and those within the 4-mile evacuation zone were asked to shelter in place and wait for additional updates.

By shortly after 4:00 p.m., the county announced that all orders related to the emergency had been lifted and declared the area safe.

“The gas company is taking over the investigation,” the announcement said.

The worker who ruptured the line was treated at a local hospital for minor injuries, according to reports.

The gas company, however, claimed that no explosion had taken place, despite social media posts from local residents saying that they’d heard an explosion and then a noise that sounded like “low-flying jets.”

“There was no ignition, fire, or explosion associated with this incident and the cause is under investigation,” the Williams Companies, a natural gas distributor that owns the pipeline, told the AP.

However, Chief David Jones of the Middleton Fire Department Battalion told the AP, “It was a pretty substantial explosion just due to the pressure in that line.”

“The explosion was felt,” Jones added, “and the gas flow could be felt about a mile away.”

KBOI published pictures of what it called the “remains of an excavator that hit a gas line” and reported that a piece of the ruptured pipeline had been found about a quarter of a mile from the scene of the accident.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.