Gas scare traced to college student's car

Wednesday, February 15, 2012
A car coming into Greencastle from U.S. 231 North left a trail of odor investigations in its wake that left the Greencastle Fire Department busy much of Monday morning. (Image courtesy of Google)

A natural gas scare that kept Greencastle firefighters hopping for more than an hour Monday morning turned out to be nothing more than a common problem for thousands of college kids -- a car in need of a tune-up.

Greencastle Fire Department crews responded to the first call, to the Putnam County Courthouse, at 9:11 a.m., and the onslaught began. For the next 80 minutes, they responded to 11 calls of a natural gas odor on Washington, Locust, Seminary, Bloomington, College and Hanna streets.

"It was called in as natural gas," GFD Capt. Bill Miller said. "There's a smell that they put into the gas so we can smell it. You can't actually smell methane, so they put mercaptan into this gas as a safety measure."

At each call, the same script played out -- the odor was gone and no source was found.

"We chased a smell from the courthouse square, down to City Hall, clear up Hanna, across Olive and up into the Peeler Art Center and the Olin Science Building," Miller said.

Approximately 20 responders from GFD and Vectren Energy Delivery eventually tracked the odor to the Peeler parking lot.

Specifically, the smell seemed to center on one car, belonging to a DePauw student who had driven to Greencastle from northern Indiana Monday morning.

"This young man had been driving for the last two hours and basically some parts and pieces under the hood had gotten hot," Miller said.

Once firefighters were able to retrace the times and locations of the "natural gas" calls, they could figure out the student's route into town.

"We chased this car's whole route into Greencastle," Miller said. "He came down U.S. 231 North, into the square. He turned at the Clark station, went right up Locust Street to Olive Street, turned and went down Olive Street (across Indiana Street) and parked his car. We followed that same route by people calling in an odor."

Even with the source located, it was hard to believe the odor -- which smelled to everyone like the mercaptan in natural gas -- was coming from a motor vehicle.

"It was just too hard to believe that this car was packing such an odor," Miller said.

Officials even had the young man move his car across the parking lot.

"We had him actually move the car from one end of the parking lot to the other. We thought, maybe the vehicle was sitting on the leak in the parking lot," Miller said.

Vectren crews drilled to find a leak where the car had been, but the smell had already moved across the parking lot with the car.

Miller said he did not want to speculate on the exact cause of the odor, but that a combination of smells coming from the hot car likely caused the problem.

"It came down to a very strong odor being given off by the vehicle," he said. "There were parts of this car that were getting overheated and it was mistaken for the odor of natural gas."

He added that the problem was exacerbated by Monday morning's weather conditions -- little to no wind and a low, heavy cloud ceiling.

"There was only a 4 mph breeze out of the southwest, so air wasn't really moving. And there was a really low and heavy ceiling," Miller said.

As for the student and his car, Miller's layman opinion is it may be time for some professional assistance.

"He's probably going to be taking it to a mechanic to see what he thinks," the firefighter said with a laugh.

Comments
View 6 comments
Note: The nature of the Internet makes it impractical for our staff to review every comment. Please note that those who post comments on this website may do so using a screen name, which may or may not reflect a website user's actual name. Readers should be careful not to assign comments to real people who may have names similar to screen names. Refrain from obscenity in your comments, and to keep discussions civil, don't say anything in a way your grandmother would be ashamed to read.
  • I MUST have more details!

    -- Posted by elbarto on Tue, Feb 14, 2012, at 8:24 AM
  • very possible to be a clogged cat..

    -- Posted by jcwilson81 on Wed, Feb 15, 2012, at 10:41 AM
  • annual state car inspection would solve problems like this and many other vehicle safety issues.

    -- Posted by localmom44 on Wed, Feb 15, 2012, at 12:04 PM
  • Annual car inspection is a corrupt racket. It actually does very little to force repair of junk cars or take them off the road, but it's quite useful for lining the pockets of those in charge of the inspection stickers.

    -- Posted by Clovertucky on Wed, Feb 15, 2012, at 3:23 PM
  • Also, depending on where he came from, he may have had an inspection. There are four counties in Indiana (2 near Chicago, and 2 near Louisville) that require inspections.

    -- Posted by Clovertucky on Wed, Feb 15, 2012, at 3:25 PM
  • Periodic state auto inspections are a racket that penelize the majority of law-abiding citizens. I believe the Indiana State Police have the authority and responsibility to enforce all inspection requirements at this time. I would rather that they do this when neccessary. The vast majority of state inspections accomplishes almost nothing except to penilize the majority.

    -- Posted by gunner on Fri, Feb 17, 2012, at 9:24 AM
Respond to this story

Posting a comment requires free registration: