Pedros Pizza owner Joe Manitta seeks compensation after gas leak closed the Captain Cook Highway on Sheridan Street

A business owner on the brink of closing his business has asked for compensation after a gas leak closed his shop for a day losing revenue.

A BUSINESS owner on the brink of closing his business has asked for compensation after a gas leak closed his shop for a day losing revenue.

On Monday the Captain Cook Highway on Sheridan Street closed after extensive repairs were needed. There was one leak but gas escaped in two different locations. It was first reported about 12.40pm and the road was reopened by 9.30pm for normal use.

The road was closed and motorists were blocked for about nine hours.

It is understood the incident was caused by a third party digger and investigations are ongoing.

The sudden road closure affected a number of businesses on the street.

Pedros Pizza owner Joe Manitta said the shop was forced to close about 3pm on Monday during a dire time.

“I lost a whole night’s worth of money, about $900,” Mr Manitta said.

“At the moment that money is very significant because it’s very quiet. It’s very disheartening.”

“I’ve been here for 30 years and I’ve never seen it this quiet. We will probably have to close the shop.”

What seemed like only one night has taken a toll on the business.

“It wasn’t our fault, Origin should compensate us or at least put a discount on gas,” he said.

“It was not OK for me at all, whatever we lose we can’t recover anymore.”

It’s not just the road closure that affected businesses. Two-hour-long power outage in the area also affected many business including a number of hotels.

Queens Court hotel manager Trisha Clark said it came at a terrible time.

“The tourism in Cairns is absolutely booming and yesterday was one of our biggest days that we had arrivals,” Ms Clark said.

“We had 38 arrivals and we couldn’t do anything.”

Ms Clark said the hotel lost power for a couple of hours making it difficult to check people in.

“I had guests that were pulling up on the other side of Upward Street because they had it blocked off and we had to try to direct them.”

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But one of the worst parts was that the business did not receive any information.

Ms Clark said they did not know what was going on.

“There was no communication at all. I kept looking for updates from Queensland Police and there was nothing put on until the power came back on.”

While some guests did not mind having to have a quiet night in, Jackson Jordan from Kingaroy said it all happened pretty quickly.

“The power went out without warning but word go around pretty quick that there was a gas leak,” Mr Jordan said.

“We were planning to have a quiet one and get some dinner but had to get Uber Eats.”

However, it wasn’t just the businesses on the closed street that were affected by the gas leak.

Sheridan Street based telecommunications company’s thousands of its customers in different areas were affected.

Telequip director Manish Mathew said it affected their customers in areas like Port Douglas and Cairns because their office went down.

“We do have a data centre here. We have local technicians. Basically have a good thing going but it's the worst thing when something like this happens,” Mr Mathew said.

“It’s not just our office going down, when that goes down all the infrastructure, NBN connections, all the related ones goes down.”

Mr Mathew said many businesses they deal with like medical centres and logistics were affected, impacting about thousands of their companies.

“Eventhough we have backups the sequence of events may prevent this backup option are executed effectively.”

“We had to deal with a lot of phone calls,” he said.

“Basically we had to spend our time fixing things and looking at different strategies when our office didn’t have power supply.”

Originally published as Pedros Pizza owner Joe Manitta seeks compensation after gas leak closed the Captain Cook Highway on Sheridan Street