Gas
When I walked our dog this morning, two muscular officials were urgently pressing our young doorman to rouse the building’s superintendent on the phone.
The super is a Romanian with a warm heart and an unfortunate resemblance to Saddam Hussein. His voice came blaring up on the intercom.
“The gas leak is in the school,” I heard him say, meaning the high school that abuts our apartment building. “Everything here is hunky-dory.”
“Nothing is hunky-dory,” said the younger of the muscular officials into the intercom. “The leak is in the Chinese restaurant, too. It’s definitely in this building.”
As I worked through the early morning morning, I heard many fire engines.
The Wife called to tell me that a natural gas odor was being reported all over the city. We decided not to panic, and to phone each other again when we knew more.
A while later we knew more. We knew the “smell of gas” was being reported from Battery Park to upper Manhattan, and in parts of New Jersey.
We knew that the smell was not natural gas but mercaptan, a chemical that is injected into natural gas to let people know when there’s a leak.
We knew that some trains to New Jersey were suspended. Some buildings had been evacuated. The subway was still working.
We discussed sending our two-year-old to Brooklyn with a baby-sitter, in case Manhattan blew up.
If we were going to do it, we’d better do it while the subways were still usable. If a state of emergency was declared, the underground would clog with terrified human beings, trampling each other.
We decided, on the basis of no evidence one way or the other, that Manhattan was not going to blow up today.
A little while later, the mayor said the same thing.
Train service to New Jersey was restored before lunchtime.
Nobody knows what caused the smell.
Filed under: Design, family, glamorous, war, peace, and justice
hehe. Jeff, your news posts are SOOOO much more interesting than the networks. =P
It is good to hear that nothing bad happened.
Of course, good to hear that Mr. Z, The Wife, the kid, and the dog are just fine.
Oh, and regarding the smell… Wasn’t me. =)
One thing’s for sure… today was the day for fart jokes in NYC.
Jeez. I come from Hamilton, Ontario where when the wind changes directions (every few weeks) you get a powerful smell of sulphur from the steel companies on the waterfront. I’m sure this sort of thing happens in any major industrial city. I lived several kilometers from the steel factories; Manhattan island, despite its self-image, is a small, small place, only a few klicks wide. Its no wonder the whole place experienced the smell but the idea that this is/was life-threatening is a little hysterical. Plus, for natural gas to ignite, it needs to be quite concentrated – not something thats too likely if its atmospheric. No offence, but this is the type of thing that makes people in the hinterland snigger at nervous New Yorkers. So good on you Zeldman and bad-on the media for playing this up.
Jeffrey, do you personally use Ruby on Rails for your current projects? My experience with it has been poor and I’m more into symfony. And, uh, I should probably comment on the leak, but I guess I don’t really care that much. You and the fam are alive and the leak sounds minor.
I am a doorman in lower Manhattan & our super & I also got hammered with calls from almost every shareholder in our building this morning about the gas smell.
CNN’s headlines of “Mystery Stench Baffles New Yorkers” struck me as kind of redundant. Isn’t there always a kind of odor permeating Manhattan? And when the reports started to include Newark, well, come on. The Jersey jokes just kind of write themselves, don’t they?
In any event, I’m glad that nothing bad has come of it so far. Sometimes the world just does odd things. Remember “Everybody Poops”? Maybe megacities need to do that occasionally as well.
I walked into work this morning, traversing 20 minutes worth of midtown Manhattan, and never smelled a thing. My only hint that something was amiss came when I got to the office and some TV reporters from the neighboring building were outside, portable lights blaring, lathering themselves up into a frenzy of non-reporting ecstasy. “A fire truck just passed by! It’s probably going to the source of the odor!”
Today was just silly; I had relatives from out of town calling me about the “mysterious smell!” I thanked them for their concern; but no, the City did not blow up; and yes, I am OK.
Although, I wish it was the Maple Syrup smell, this time.
I have to say that I’m really impressed with how you handled yourself. Calm and rational. I’m glad everyone there is okay. Did your wife and kid have to at least evacuate the building to avoid undesirable effects from the gas leak? Or was it not really noticeable in your home?
[...] hadn’t been for Jeffrey’s blog post on the gas smell in NYC.Great work, spammers!PermalinkEmail thisComments[0] [...]
Jeff,
LOVE how you tell it! Thanks for the update, was wondering what really actually happened.
Justin
[...] Mercaptan Published January 24th, 2007 Software Development A couple of weeks back Jeffrey Zeldman posted about a gas leak in New York. This sentence jumped out at me: We knew that the smell was not natural gas but mercaptan, a chemical that is injected into natural gas to let people know when there’s a leak. [...]
Just two words: Greens Point :-)