How emergency crews trace odd odors and determine if they're safe

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]When you smell something bad and you report it to the city or the county, teams are deployed to try and figure out what it is and if it's dangerous.

[00:00:08]>> Yeah, just yesterday crews from several departments across the county were sent out to track down a mysterious smell, but in the end they were never able to find a source. Reporter Leiliana Pearson joins us from Channelview where some of the first smell reports came in.

[00:00:20]Leiliana?

[00:00:22]That's right. Today we spoke to the Harris County Fire Marshal's office who tells me they were getting report of sulfur or rotten eggs. That's typically associated with natural gas. And while it appears that the smell may have originated here in Channelview, it was smelled clear across the county all the way to Cypress and even Tomball. So as I mentioned today we won't we spoke with the Harris County Fire Marshal's hazmat team. We spoke with Richard Lawhorn. He says that they were able that they were working to track down a smell and that there's a couple things that they typically do when they're trying to get that job done. He says first they put information into a computer model that tells them wind speeds and directions and that they can give them an area of where exactly that smell may have originated such as a gas leak or a chemical plant. Then they go in person and use handheld devices to test the air over and over to figure out if the air has any chemicals in it and if so, how much. If they find the origin, the Fire Marshal's office tells me that they work the scene until it's no longer considered an emergency and they can hand it over to another team that will clean it up. Or in yesterday's case, if they can't find the origin, they pack up and rely on permanent air testers that are installed around the county to keep an eye on the area.

[00:01:33]A lot of redundant work, a lot of lot of going out, sampling, testing, making sure that we're looking at the numbers, making sure that we're communicating with all the players and you know, the citizens have the right to know what's going on. And so and and we want to maintain that communication in case, let's say we do find a source and something could be really bad and we need to shelter in place an area.

[00:01:57]Lawhorn says a common odor that has my team responds to is most likely the same one that people across Harris County were smelling on Thursday. It's called mercaptan. Mercaptan is a harmless chemical which is purposely added into odorless natural gas. That way a leak or a spill is easier to detect. And Lawhorn tells me that mercaptan can be smelt at very small amounts. You can smell it even if a tank is simply opened up or if it's being cleaned out. He says add on top of that yesterday's windy conditions that may have been why that smell was able to be smelt so far away. From Channel View, I'm Liliana Pearson, ABC 13 Eyewitness News.

[00:02:32]>> Good breakdown, Liliana. Thanks.