Soutwest Gas Safety Announcement

Though I may not sit at a corporate level as of right now, I have the ability to advise and recommend certain policies in which Southwest Gas Corp. has assigned as protocol.
If you smell gas in your home, please DO NOT wait to see if it will go away. Chances are that you could be smelling gas that can be dangerous if a large amount accumulates in an area without much ventilation. Common gas leak areas- dryers because of people moving in and out of a home/apartment. This is the most common item installed by the owner of the appliance. Sometimes  fittings just aren't tightened tight enough. Also, new installations of any appliance. If you buy the appliance from Home Depot, Lowes, etc. and they offer to install it. In my experience, its almost always done wrong and they try to stack fittings that don't fit together properly, on top of one another and this will lead to a leak at some point. Key word being will. Stacked fittings will leak eventually. Please call a contractor that is a professional.
Another problem area is outside on the MSA or, meter set assembly. This typically refers to the gas meter on the side of your home. Maybe be a single meter to a single home or a large amount of meters on a single MSA at an apartment complex/condos. Smelling gas outside is a lot safer than indoors but nonetheless can still be potentially dangerous. If you smell gas out by the meter or in the street, please call Southwest Gas ASAP, along with 911. If you are indoors, please leave the building. In any event of gas odor in the air, refrain from building static electricity, using your phone in gaseous atmosphere (so call somewhere away from gas odor), starting car, opening garage, flicking switch, touching breaker box, and obviously lighting a cigarette. Though the actual lit cigarette will not be hot enough to ignite gas (has to be 1200 degrees), the inhaling of the cigarette can cause it to reach the ignition temperature of gas.
And just an additional bit of information-natural gas is odorless. But what? I thought it smells like rotten eggs? Your right, natural gas coming out of facility owned utilities, an odorant is added to the gas called Mercaptan. So, in the natural world, if there was a gas leak in the wild, you would have no way of smelling the gas the way you smell it now. If you don't know what the difference between the smell of natural gas and car gas, sewer, etc. You can turn your stove on without lighting it right away. Please do not do this for more than 4 seconds at a time, if you need to do it at all.
Hope this is helpful. More natural gas facts to come.
If you have any questions please feel free to ask.