If you smell gas, do not use this site. Leave the building on foot, do not use a phone, a light switch or anything else that could ignite, and call 911 and your gas utility from somewhere else. Do not call us — we are a referral service and we are not an emergency line. What to do, in order.

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If You Smell Gas

This is PHMSA’s guidance and we have added nothing to it. Do this first and read the rest of the site later.

Read this first

If you smell gas, leave the building on foot. Do not use a phone, a light switch or anything else electrical while you are inside. Call 911 and the gas utility once you are somewhere else. Those are PHMSA’s instructions and they come before everything else.

Source: PHMSA, Pipeline Leak Recognition and What to Do.

GaslineSafe is a referral service, not a contractor and not an emergency service. If you suspect a leak, leave and call 911 and your gas utility — not us. Otherwise we connect homeowners with independent contractors. Contractors are required to hold whatever credential their state or municipality demands, and gas work is separately licensed in most of them; every state page sets out who licenses plumbers there and where to check. We carry out no work, we do not set prices, and we never charge homeowners anything — the contractors in our network pay us when we route them a call.

Do this now

  1. Turn off gas appliances if you can do it on your way out without delay.
  2. Leave the area by foot immediately. Take anyone else with you and stay upwind.
  3. Call 911 from a safe location — somewhere else, not inside — and then notify the gas utility.

Source: PHMSA, Pipeline Leak Recognition and What to Do.

Do not do any of this

  • Do not use a telephone or cell phone in the building.
  • Do not cause any open flame or other source of ignition — that includes light switches, appliances and anything electrical.
  • Do not ring doorbells to warn other people.
  • Do not try to operate any valves yourself.
  • Do not come into direct contact with escaping gas.
  • Do not drive into a leak or vapor cloud while leaving.

And do not call us

We are a referral service. We route calls to independent contractors and we are not an emergency line, we are not on call, and we cannot help you faster than 911 can. Nothing on this site is worth the delay.

Once the utility has made the property safe, there may be work to do. That is when who owns which part of the line starts to matter, and it is what the rest of this site is about.

Why you can smell it at all

Natural gas has no smell of its own. PHMSA notes that gas distribution systems are odorized with mercaptan or a similar chemical, which is why a leak in a house smells of rotten eggs or skunk. Transmission and gathering lines further upstream are not always odorized.

The odorant is added so that people notice. Noticing it is the system working.

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