Mysterious Gas Smell in Manhattan

[RDU-JFK]

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?secti ... id=4914449

Looks like a gas odor is being smelled in midtown...anyone up there have any first hand account? Don't smell anything downtown...

[Mellyrose]

Honestly, I thought I smelled something funny at 59th and Lex when transferring to the 6, but when you're underground at a subway station, you don't usually think twice about strange odors. Then, I got a panicky phonecall from my dad who lives upstate and is glued to the news, making sure I'm ok. I had no idea what he was talking about.

Apparently lower Manahattan is being evacuated. I may be going home soon. If anyone has any more info, please post it.

[pgengler]

Bloomberg talked a bit about it at a morning press conference; he said that there's no evidence of any higher-than-normal amounts of natural gas, and that it's possible the smell (of mercaptan, the chemical added to natural gas to give it the smell) is not natural gas.

PATH was shut down on the 33rd Street lines for a while, and in my building, the "fire director" made some announcements earlier (between 9 and 10) that the smell was not a gas leak in the building, that it was coming from outside, and that the building fans had been shut down (and later restarted).

I didn't notice anything particular unusual on my walk over from the PA this morning, but I'm often oblivious to other stuff when I'm walking.

[PhilDernerJr]

Mel makes some damn good chili and the city tends to suffer a bit the next morning.

[Matt Molnar]

I just got to work and I didn't smell anything outside (Broadway and 57th), but there is a faint odor of what smells sort of like natural gas mixed with formaldehyde in the office. I saw a bunch of Con Ed trucks around 34th with some fire trucks but traffic seemed to be moving normally.

[Matt Molnar]

Bloomberg: "We are waiting for the gas to pass."

[Mellyrose]

The Times covered it well: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/nyreg ... r=homepage

[cancidas]

the question remains: who done it?

[emshighway]

The Times covered it well: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/nyreg ... r=homepage

But it didn't have your Chili recipe in it...

[emshighway]

There was southerly winds today. I would put a bet on a chemical company in Staten Island or Jersey passed a little gas this morning.

[Matt Molnar]

They never found the source of the maple syrup smell that was blanketing Manhattan every few days about a year ago also.

[PhilDernerJr]

They never found the source of the maple syrup smell that was blanketing Manhattan every few days about a year ago also.

THIS I never understood. I used to smell that every morning for almost all of my childhood, breakfast jokes aside.

I figured that the smell was jsut the natural smell of industry, and that winds were blowing the smell from the rock quarries and factories in southern College Point to central CP where I lived. A strong syrup smell.

[moose135]

From Newsday.com - it's New Jersey's fault...

Officials trace mystery smell to NJ
BY LUIS PEREZ
NEWSDAY STAFF WRITER

January 9, 2007, 11:52 AM EST
This time, the smell wasn't so sweet.

A sulphurous stench enveloped a swath of Manhattan for hours Monday morning, spurring an investigation that yielded only partial answers to yet another malodorous episode in recent city history.

Like in the case of the "sweet smell" before it, however, it seemed New Jersey was to blame.

With the help of the United States Coast Guard, officials tracked the smell across the Hudson to New Jersey. Yet officials across the river could not conduct air tests because they could not pinpoint the exact location of the smell, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey state Department of Environmental Protection said.

"We think it emanates somewhere between Secaucus and Jersey City," said Charles Sturcken, a spokesman for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection.

New Jersey Environmental Protection Commissioner Lisa Jackson said Tuesday her agency was not sending investigators to the formerly smelly spots, but was reviewing emission records of plants in the area to try to determine where the odor may have originated. She said the area has some oil refineries -- and that a natural gas pipeline problem could be a culprit. "We may not be able to find it," she said. She also bristled upon hearing that New York officials said they believed the smell came from New Jersey. "It looks an awful lot like jumping to conclusions," she said.

Jackson said she wished that New York instead would help New Jersey look for the source of the smell. But, she said, she had not called officials there to ask for such aid. The city's 911 line logged nearly 500 calls reporting the strange scent between 8:45 a.m. and noon, city officials said.

It was a mystery reminiscent of the fall of 2005, when a maple syrup-like odor wafted across the city. Its source was never discovered. It returned that winter, and New Yorkers experienced an unexplained scent in August.

At the World Trade Center station, several PATH platforms were evacuated. In Chelsea, the 23rd Street subway station was closed. Two public schools in Manhattan and several floors in office buildings, including 30 Rockefeller Center, were emptied, according to reports.

At 10:45 a.m., Mayor Michael Bloomberg told a morning news conference at City Hall that the smell was most likely benign. "We don't know what it is," Bloomberg said. "It does not appear to be dangerous. ... It may just be an unpleasant smell." The mayor said the smell's origin may have been methyl mercaptan, a stinky compound added to odorless natural gas.

At 11 a.m., the federal Department of Homeland Security issued a statement ruling out terrorism, and Consolidated Edison reported no gas leaks.

By noon, a few dozen people, mostly in Manhattan, had been taken to city hospitals or were treated for minor ailments, said Jim Long, an FDNY spokesman. "It was just a pungent smell like gas leaking, like when you first turn your stove on and a tiny bit of gas escapes," said Rae Zimmerman of NYU's Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, who is studying mass reactions to catastrophic events. "I think smell certainly can be a terrorist mechanism, whether it harms people or not. Smells that people don't understand certainly can cause anxiety."

By nightfall, city officials' tests on substances in the air found none more harmful than organic compounds normally found in car exhaust, Sturcken said.