Odor continues to cause concern for residents in South Hills, source still unknown
A woman reached out to Channel 11 over the weekend and said fire trucks were called to the Southland Shopping Center in Pleasant Hills because of a gas smell. We have been hearing from people in the South Hills about a similar smell for months now, and no one seems to know what’s causing it.
“It smells like natural gas,” said Sandra Scott.
Sandra Scott lives in Jefferson Hills. She says she’s been smelling it off and on for four months. Some days, it’s stronger than others.
“My daughter was over, and she’s like ‘Mom, you have to call’,” said Scott. “There’s a gas leak, and I’m like ‘No I’ve called. They’ve been here three times. There’s no gas leak’.”
Peoples Gas says it’s received an usually high number of outside odor calls from this area in recent weeks. So far, the gas company hasn’t found any evidence that the cause of the odor is from any of their natural gas infrastructure, pipelines or facilities.
“There’s no leak,” said MacKenzie Savage from Pleasant Hills. “They don’t find anything. The same thing over the weekend. They didn’t find anything.”
Channel 11 reached out to Columbia Gas too. In a statement, Columbia Gas said, “We had crews respond to several gas odor reports in that area over the weekend but found no issues on our system or possible sources of the odor.”
“It’s absolutely not reassuring,” said Savage. “No. It’s scary that they can’t seem to find the cause of it.”
“I’m sure somebody can figure it out,” said Scott. “It’s whether they want to or not.”
The gas companies continue to work with first responders and other businesses in the area to get to the bottom of this. In the meantime, they’re encouraging people to call their gas company if they smell any kind of natural gas odor. They take these calls very seriously and dispatch a technician to every call.
“For me as a parent, it makes us nauseous,” said Savage. “Gives us headaches. We have to close our windows, and it’s just not coming to an end.”
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