Maple Syrup Was Better: Smell of Gas Covers NYC

We don't know what's up with the crazy gas smell. The reports we've read had the location at 34th Street and 5th-7th-8th Avenues in Manhattan, but our readers are smelling it from the Upper West Side to downtown. WNBC reports that the smell is so strong on the 6th floor of 30 Rockefeller Center, "people are leaving the building." NY1 says the smell is strong around Herald Square and in NY1's neighborhood in Chelsea."

So far, Con Ed and the city's Office of Emergency Management are supposedly checking it out. There are also a lot of NYPD sirens - perhaps checking out the possible leak and trying to calm freaking-out New Yorkers?

We'll keep updating this story. Tell us where you're smelling it. Is it in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island - or just Manhattan? And we thought all we'd have to deal with today was a case of the Mondays!

Update: ABC and Fox are reporting that the smell may have originated with a large gas leak at Bleecker and West 4th. But Fox is now saying the location may be at 7th and 13th, near St. Vincents. So things are still confused.

Update: ConEd is reporting no leaks anywhere in the system-- so it's a real mystery!

Update: a tipster called to say St. Vincents is being evacuated, and PATH trains are shut down into the city. So the smell is definitely strongest right now in the Village. Action seems to be centered at Bleecker and West 12th.

Update: Bloomberg is saying there was a gas leak on Bleecker and 6th, but much too small to be responsible for something like this. Various agencies are investigating, but the city's air quality sensors haven't picked up anything unusual. Now he's saying not to worry about it too much, but to open windows if the smell is particularly bad: "The one thing we are very confident of is that it's not dangerous."

A reporter asked how smelling gas is not dangerous. Mayor Bloomberg said that when gas enters the air, it "diversifies": "The amount of the chemical that you can smell is so minute... it's not dangerous." He adds that he didn't smell it at his home on the Upper East Side and didn't smell it at City Hall; also, all the PATH service is back to normal. OEM Commissioner Bruno says that there were 27 calls related to the gas smell, just people were feeling ill but no one was transported to the hospital.

Update: As the city says that the air is safe, it's not to late to enjoy how agencies are reacting. Reader Sacha Lecca sent us these great photographs of Con Ed testing the air and manholes in the West Village.

The news vans were on the scene, too, but it's hard for TV cameras to capture a gas leak when people aren't collapsing in the street (or dead birds on the street, as they are in Austin). Still, NY1's Roger Clark did a good job when he just said, "Uggh."

What kind of air monitor doodad is this? And where can we buy one, because the iron lung we've been looking into might take a while to ship.

Photographs by Sacha Lecca

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Jen Chung on January 8, 2007 11:55 AM

Comments [rss]

joanabelle

well just so you all know the air stinks in connecticut as well. it started at 11pm 1/8/2010. it has not let up yet. im in new haven county , my mom is in fairfield county and it smells there too. no reports on the new as of yet.it probably smells in eastern NY as well 684E.

can anyone name that horrific smell. it smells like heated raid bug spray to me.

russian

Well, I had so much to drink the night before (Russian Orthodox Christmas & my wife's birth day on the same day) I could not smell anything. But the guy in a cube next to me, who had been exposed to the smell since 8:50 in the morning, developed headache by 11:00. And we were on 28th floor at 32nd and 7 avenue...

hmm

isn't it weird that they mystery smells seem to only have started popping up post 9-11? just saying...

JCH

I didn't smell any gas but I did smell maple syrup

around 143rd st and 8th ave up in Harlem.

I noticed the smell around 7:00 pm and when I left

the area around 2:00am it still smelled.

hacker in london

i would tend agree with Will above. the only way to test for a non-odourless nerve gas terror attack would be to release a VERY smelly non-toxic gas. the other alternative explanation is that it really was a leak of mercaptan and because of the weird weather (72 degrees - what the f**k? in winter???) that it lingered around and couldnt disperse.

Will

I have to agree with dwhite... as crazy as it sounds, this seems like a it could have been a covert urban dispersion experiment. Between today's occurance, the Staten Island odor this summer and the maple syrup smell in 2005, there have been a number of strange odors in the city that were apparently not dangerous but that summoned emergency responders to look for gases and tested the reporting that would occur during the incident. And all three times all the government workers looking for the source found nothing and, in the first two at least, just let it go as soon as it faded from the headlines.

Today the mayor was able to very confidently say that they didn't know what the smell was but that it wasn't dangerous. That seems overly confident in a post-9/11 NYC, unless he had reason to be so confident. I wouldn't be surprised if the same team that did the publicized dispersion tests came out and said they had been doing these as well to test government and public reaction.

But I don't like to talk like a conspiracy theorist, because this sounds nutty... so prove me wrong, please.

Will

I have to agree with dwhite... as crazy as it sounds, this seems like a it could have been a covert urban dispersion experiment. Between today's occurance, the Staten Island odor this summer and the maple syrup smell in 2005, there have been a number of strange odors in the city that were apparently not dangerous but that summoned emergency responders to look for gases and tested the reporting that would occur during the incident. And all three times all the government workers looking for the source found nothing and, in the first two at least, just let it go as soon as it faded from the headlines.

Today the mayor was able to very confidently say that they didn't know what the smell was but that it wasn't dangerous. That seems overly confident in a post-9/11 NYC, unless he had reason to be so confident. I wouldn't be surprised if the same team that did the publicized dispersion tests came out and said they had been doing these as well to test government and public reaction.

But I don't like to talk like a conspiracy theorist, because this sounds nutty... so prove me wrong, please.

jane_bk

Ramona's right. Someone could be tracking the odor as a test. The worse may be yet to come. Now they know how we react and how far its reach is. That it happened during the morning rush hour is adding to the worry.

Will

I have to agree with dwhite... as crazy as it sounds, this seems like a it could have been a covert urban dispersion experiment. Between today's occurance, the Staten Island odor this summer and the maple syrup smell in 2005, there have been a number of strange odors in the city that were apparently not dangerous but that summoned emergency responders to look for gases and tested the reporting that would occur during the incident. And all three times all the government workers looking for the source found nothing and, in the first two at least, just let it go as soon as it faded from the headlines.

Today the mayor was able to very confidently say that they didn't know what the smell was but that it wasn't dangerous. That seems overly confident in a post-9/11 NYC, unless he had reason to be so confident. I wouldn't be surprised if the same team that did the publicized dispersion tests came out and said they had been doing these as well to test government and public reaction.

But I don't like to talk like a conspiracy theorist, because this sounds nutty... so prove me wrong, please.

MSDSs are worthless

MSDSs are worthless and aren't worth the paper they're printed on. Go to fishersci.com, search for sodium chloride, and read that MSDS. Then look up the one for sea sand.

Besides, the odor threshold for t-butyl mercaptan is far below its OSHA permissible exposure limit, that's why it's been determined to be safe enough to use as the odorant for natural gas. Do you really think the gas company could pipe a toxic chemical to all of its millions of customers without being sued over and over again?! Get a grip.

anonymous

that is a VRAE, a portable 5-gas detector manufactured by Rae Systems Inc in california. i used to work at the company, so i recognized the yellow boot. you can find more info (and order online) at their website: www.http://www.raesystems.com/

DBG

I have such terrible allergies from all this global warming, I can't smell a damn thing!

Nicole

I've lived in Manhattan all of my 42 years and I don't ever remember strange smells (besides garbage on a hot day) permeating The City like that cake/chocolate smell did or this gas smell. Too weird!

AV

I work in Union City NJ. We smelled the order-it was very strong!

nycat

On my way to work tday, around 9:15am, I smelled gas in the N train, and also at Times Square station. In the train at first I thought the shady looking guy sitting next to me was passing gas, so I gave him this "What the ****" look. I guess I owe him an apology.

JDog

Fart Joke!

Stevennnn

did they figure out where the smell was coming from and why it happened?

Captain Marcaptan

Federal testing of dispersal? No information to local officals? Paranoid much??!?

Lynard Skynard

Whiskey bottles, and brand new cars

Oak tree you're in my way

There's too much coke and too much smoke

Look what's going on inside you

Ooooh that smell

Can't you smell that smell

Ooooh that smell

The smell of death surrounds you

Kim

This morning when i was taking NJtransit into penn station i smelled something horrible outside of secaucus.. i assumed it was just jersey.. maybe it has something to do with this. It was rank. I had to smell my hair to avoid the small(i am really sensetive to smells) i am also really congested and it was really potent.