Life is what happens while you're making plans

[Dragonslayer]

Yesterday my plan was to finish doing the severe weather drills. Before I could pull the trigger on that, someone thought the smelled gas so we did an emergency gas leak building evacuation instead. Swept the building for gas leak to find no trace of gas. So 500 people got to stand around outside on a beautiful spring day for a couple of hours.

Today, we have wide spread tornado,flash floods, damaging hail watches and warnings and everyone is blowing my phone up wanting to go home. I just saidme too but that decision is above my pay grade. You think they would have been happy with the two hour break they had in the sunshine yesterday. Now everybody wants to run out in the rain get pelted by hail or blown to Oz by a tornado.

[snyper316]

Yesterday my plan was to finish doing the severe weather drills. Before I could pull the trigger on that, someone thought the smelled gas so we did an emergency gas leak building evacuation instead. Swept the building for gas leak to find no trace of gas. So 500 people got to stand around outside on a beautiful spring day for a couple of hours.

Today, we have wide spread tornado,flash floods, damaging hail watches and warnings and everyone is blowing my phone up wanting to go home. I just saidme too but that decision is above my pay grade. You think they would have been happy with the two hour break they had in the sunshine yesterday. Now everybody wants to run out in the rain get pelted by hail or blown to Oz by a tornado.

 

If it is an all metal building I can not blame them, On the other Hand I hope you guys have an underground shelter. Or something very sturdy. They have 3 states on the TORCON for 7 and I believe GA is setting at an 8. Hope you guys stay safe today.

[kevin-vic-b.c.]

I once had to respond to a "gas smell" call at our cities only Government auto insurance claim center. I walked in the door and about got knocked over by the smell. I met with the building supervisor and a senior co-worker of mine already on site. I walked about for a bit and told the building super..... it this was my building I would get the people out of here. He said are you telling me to evacuate? I said when the media shows up I don't want you saying I told you to....... but yup.

Ended up with the gas company there, local fire dept and everyone that had an appointment that afternoon freaking out.

 

We did finally track it to a faulty gas valve in a direct fired heater. It should have by code had a second redundant valve but some how it did not and of course it was the unit 20 feet in the air above the garage entrance.

 

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

 

[Dragonslayer]

Storms passed and even though it was touch and go all day there was no report damage other than a roof leak and damaged ceiling tiles. I'm responsible for emergency response protocol and we always evacuate when gas leaks are reported. Better safe than sorry. We have gas leaks reported regularly. What confuses me is:

They always seem to happen on a warm pretty days

Most of our buildings have very little gas fired equipment

We never find any trace of gas when we sweep the builds except once.

It always seems to be the same people reporting the gas leaks in areas of the buildings where there is no gas piping or gas fired equipment.

[Marcarl]

somebody just wants sometime off to stand out in the sunshine. What you could do, is the next time somebody reports a smell, give everybody the rest of the day off without pay.

[Dragonslayer]

somebody just wants sometime off to stand out in the sunshine. What you could do, is the next time somebody reports a smell, give everybody the rest of the day off without pay.

Good idea and that would probably work....The only problem with that is cranking cars to leave violates gas response protocol.

[uncledj]

As an HVAC tech, I occasionally get calls for " Gas smell", and sometimes have difficulty making the customer understand that whatever it was they smelled, it wasn't gas, as it's an all electric building.

I'll get the answer that "I smelled it this morning, and it smelled like gas".

The ? mercaptin ? or something like that....that they put in the natural gas as an alert odor is very strong and distinct, but sometimes we'll get calls where there's an odor from outside that's getting into the building. (Nail salons....restaurants....asphalt paving)....

 

All I can say is that if it happens again, call us back......and I don't recall ever getting a callback on mystery odors.

[Dragonslayer]

I keep saying the same thing. We have had people confuse car exhaust gasoline, body odor, perfume, cleaning chemicals, somebody farted with natural gas. I keep telling them gas additive smells like rotten eggs but, they don't listen.