BEL AIR, Maryland — A neighbor reported a gas smell to a utility company the night before a house in Bel Air, Maryland, exploded, killing two people. This was reported by the Baltimore Sun.
Residents near the home reported smelling gas Saturday night, but the State Fire Marshal’s Office said they have no record of anyone reporting it to 911 or Baltimore Gas and Electric.
A resident, Carline Fisher, told the newspaper that she reported the gas smell to BGE on Saturday night and spoke with an employee who arrived at the scene. Given that information, a fire chief’s spokesman contacted investigators who were looking into the explosion. They told him that BGE had indeed received a call at 8:24 p.m. Saturday night, the Sun reported.
Ray Corkran, the homeowner, and a BGE contractor, Jose Rodriguez-Alvarado, were killed in the explosion Sunday morning.
Fisher told The Sun she smelled gas “immediately” when she left her home to walk her dogs around 8 p.m. Saturday. Fisher, who lives about a third of a mile from Corkrans’ home, said she continued to smell gas as she walked.
A BGE spokesman declined to comment to the newspaper, citing an ongoing investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board. He referred questions to the NTSB, one of the agencies and other entities investigating the incident. An NTSB spokesman said it had no immediate answers to The Sun’s questions about how BGE handled the report of a gas smell Saturday night.
Oliver Alkire, spokesman and deputy chief of the state fire marshal’s office, said earlier this week that investigators from his agency and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosions told him there were no reports to 911 or BGE that night about a gas smell.
But on Thursday, Alkire said, detectives told him they had indeed questioned Fisher and that she had told them to call BGE.
“It fell through the cracks,” Alkire said of the fact that investigators initially didn’t tell him what Fisher had said.
According to Alkire, there may have been some confusion about BGE’s presence in the area Saturday night, as the utility had sent a truck to respond to an electrical problem at Corkran’s home.
At least one resident who said he smelled gas on Saturday night told The Sun he didn’t report it because he saw a BGE truck on the street and assumed it had been responding to someone else who had reported the smell.
Jennifer Gabris, a spokeswoman for the NTSB, said Thursday that the investigation is ongoing and that the team remains on the scene. She said she expects a preliminary report of the NTSB’s findings to be released in about 30 days.