Scratch-and-sniff cards caused evacuation of several buildings

Reports of a natural gas smell sparked the evacuation of several buildings in downtown Great Falls, Montana on Wednesday morning, but scratch-and-sniff cards were to blame and not a widespread gas leak.

Nick Bohr, general manager at Energy West, said workers at the company were cleaning out some storage areas and discarded several boxes of scratch-and-sniff cards that it has sent out to customers in the past to educate them on what a natural gas smells like.

“They were expired, and they were old,” Bohr said. “They threw them into the dumpsters.” When they were picked up by sanitation trucks and crushed, “it was the same as if they had scratched them.” The chemical has a very strong smell, so as the garbage truck drove around it left behind the smell of natural gas. The smell wafted into buildings and emergency crews responded to several reports of gas leaks, with at least six buildings evacuated.

Bohr said the company apologizes for the problem, especially since the smelly culprits originally were just part of a process to make everything safer. “In a sense, it worked the way it was supposed to,” Bohr said of the numerous calls reporting gas leaks.