Crews Investigate Natural Gas Odor In Lincoln Park, But Find No Leak
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Fire Department crews blanketed the Lincoln Park area on Thursday afternoon, after several residents and businesses reported smelling natural gas around Willow and Sheffield.
WBBM Newsradio's John Cody reports Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford said crews have not found any gas leak. He said the incident is similar to one last year.
"A lot of calls came in, and we could never find a source of the smell. The Fire Department is being proactive, and on the safe side we're putting a Level 2 Hazmat in, sending a lot of crews to the area to check out the calls as they come in, to make sure there is, in reality, no serious gas leak," Langford said.
He said the skunklike chemical called mercaptan is injected into the stream of odorless natural gas so people will notice if it is leaking.
Peoples Gas technicians were assisting in the investigation of the odor, but Langford said, in this case the problem seemed to be mercaptan, not a natural gas leak.
"It might just be a concentration of the chemical that produces that smell, that's put into natural gas, but no natural gas leak has been found, and we don't anticipate that we will find one," Langford said.