Baltimore Subway Stations Reopened, No Gas Leaks Detected
BALTIMORE (WJZ)— Several Baltimore subway stations were shut down Monday when someone smelled gas underground.
Alex DeMetrick has the latest on this scare.
Baltimore City hazmat crews responded with highly sensitive sniffers while the MTA evacuated eight Metro stations under downtown and sealed them off to riders. It was all triggered by a 911 call that someone made from either a train or one of the stations, complaining of a strong odor of gas shortly before noon.
"We dispatched fire department crews to each of the stations to do some monitoring," said Baltimore City Fire Chief Kevin Cartwright.
Some said they could smell the odor.
"It smelled real strong down there," said one man.
"Life is short and you just want to get home and you might die trying to get home," said Jamie Wilshire.
MTA quickly established a bus bridge between the closed stations, and a lot of confusion and inconvenience followed. MTA was not about to take chances.
"As a precaution, we wanted to make sure that we got all of the passengers out of there until everything was safe," said MTA spokesman Terry Owens.
And a few hours after it all began, the fire department gave the all clear.
"We assessed and got no readings whatsoever of any type of odor which would certainly limit the injury threshold," Cartwright said.
That meant no ambulance rides, just a lot of crowded buses.
By late Monday, all the stations were reopened and trains began to run.
The fire department says it's not clear that the odor described was natural gas or gasoline.
