O&R Urges Customers to Report Natural Gas Odors Immediately

With more people at home during the day than ever before as a result of the pandemic, Orange & Rockland (O&R) is urging customers who smell natural gas to report the odor to O&R immediately.

You’ll know natural gas when you smell it. Natural gas is treated with a strong chemical that produces a very distinctive, eye-watering odor, often compared to the smell of rotten eggs.

If you smell gas and suspect a leak you should:

• Leave your home immediately and take all others with you. If outside, get well away from where you suspect the gas is leaking.
• Call O&R’s gas hotline at 800-533-LEAK (5325) or
• Call O&R Customer Service at 1-877-434-4100, or
• Call police and fire emergency response at 911 once safely away from the premises.
  O&R’s Gas Operations team of experts is ready to respond around the clock. Once notified, a natural gas crew will be dispatched to your location immediately.

Under O&R’s COVID-19 response procedures, when the crew members arrive at your location they will ask if anyone in the household is ill and discuss with you how O&R will carry out its tasks with everyone’s safety and comfort in mind.

It’s important for customers to know that our staff will carry proper identification and wear appropriate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Our workers are following U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and New York State guidelines to maintain social distance (6-feet away) at all times, and we are asking our customers to do the same.

Here are gas safety tips everybody should know. If you smell natural gas and suspect a leak you should:

• Leave your home immediately and take others with you. If outside, get well away from where you suspect the natural gas is leaking.
• Call O&R at 800-533-LEAK (5325), 1-877-434-4100, or 911 once safely away from the premises.
• Tell us if there also is a problem with your electric service.
• Do NOT do anything to create a spark. A spark could cause an explosion. Lighting a match, turning appliances on or off, using a phone or cell phone could cause a spark. Do not ring a doorbell or start a car.
• If you remain at the scene, follow directions from emergency responders when they arrive.

Orange and Rockland Utilities, Inc. (O&R), a wholly owned subsidiary of Consolidated Edison, Inc., one of the nation’s largest investor-owned energy companies, is a regulated utility. O&R provides electric service to approximately 300,000 customers in southeastern New York State (where its franchise name is Orange & Rockland) and northern New Jersey (where it’s Rockland Electric Company) and natural gas service to approximately 130,000 customers in New York.