"911, What's Your Emergency?"

I am going to try and make a very long story short....Here it goes:

Last night around 7 pm, I walked into the kitchen to do the dishes and noticed a smell. It smelled like a gas burner on the stove top had been left on without the flame lit. So obviously concerned, I called Ben in. He agreed that there was definitely a smell, but wasn't convinced it was from the stove top.

Ben pulled the stove out, turned off the gas, opened the window and turned on the exhaust fan. I did the dishes and then headed into the bedroom where the smell about knocked me down. Confused as to where the smell was actually coming from, Ben and I walked around sniffing everywhere as if we suddenly joined the canine species. Surprisingly, our master bathroom smelled the strongest. So we opened the windows and turned on the fan. Mind you it is in the low 20s outside.

We called the emergency maintenance number. We didn't want to call 911 because we weren't sure that it was gas from the stove. The maintenance guy came in and was like, "Whoa! It really does smell in here!" Duh. So after he searched around he found a garage that had a car that really really smelled strongly of gasoline. The strange thing was, the garages are not directly below our apartment and moreover, the car was not leaking. After going back and forth, the maintenance guy could not determine the owner of the vehicle and so he called 911.

With sirens blazing the firetruck showed up along with the shift commander. It was hilarious to see the people "rubber-necking" out of their windows and driving by very slowly. One woman was on the 3rd floor across the way and had her blinds pulled all the way up and her window open so she could hear what was going on!

They checked out our apartment, as well as the other apartments in our building. They broke into one garage to check another car, and somehow got inside the stinky car. They could not find a leak but were pretty sure that that car was the culprit. So the Sheriffs Department was called to determine the ownership of the vehicle to have it moved and further investigate the stench. They couldn't figure it out. The plates were from California so I don't know if that was part of the problem.

So the firefighters said they were going to leave the garage door open and if the smell got worse in our apartment, we were to call them back and they would tow the vehicle. Luckily, the smell seemed to dissipate and there was only a slight hint of the smell this morning. So hopefully, they will find the owner today and get the situation resolved. Otherwise we may be calling our good ol' friends at the fire department again this evening.

Other than my splitting headache this morning, everyone is doing fine. :)