okay you know that one game you’d play on the playground with friends where one person was designated as the “watcher” and everyone had to move around when the watcher wasn’t looking, and freeze if they were? and if the watcher caught you moving you were out of the game?
me, an hour ago: “fuck, the stove is on! what do we do?” [immediately does all the wrong things]
PSA: What NOT to do when you smell gas
In this situation, we got home to a smell of gas throughout the house and discovered our gas stove was on without a flame. it was only a tiny stream, and everything turned out fine, but here’s a brief list of everything we did wrong:
NOTE: this is for if you smell significant amounts of gas, not a blanket list for all possible gas situations. (If you aren’t aware, the methane**/natural gas used in houses smells vaguely like sulfer, or rotten eggs - this is an additive, since it has no natural smell. It’s a very recognizable smell, once you’ve smelled it once. It’s not the same smell as gasoline.)
1. If your stove has an electrical/spark ignition, do NOT turn it off.
Spark ignitions often spark when turning on *and* off. Spark + Gas = Boom. Boom is bad. Avoid boom.
Instead, turn off the gas at the source, i.e. the physical valve at the meter. There may be a smaller valve near the stove. If you don’t know where the shutoff is, the fire department will find it.
2. Do NOT turn on (or off) vents or fans.
In fact, don’t flip any electrical switches - that includes lights, plugging in or unplugging appliances, etc. These cause sparks. Spark + Gas = Boom.
Also, don’t start your car. obviously.
3. Do NOT open windows
counterintuitive, I know. This is mostly because you want to prioritize your exit, but it’s also to keep the fumes from spreading outside, where you should be waiting for the ~professionals~ to come handle it.
4. DO take all people and pets outside.
Do this very first!! (one thing we actually did right - go us!)
This is obviously because you don’t want to go boom, but you also don’t want to suffocate. Gas is poison!
NOTE: the gas from your stove is probably methane (natural gas); carbon monoxide is what you get when methane burns, which is why your kitchen needs to be well-ventilated and the stove shouldn’t be left burning for long periods of time, but the natural gas itself is *also* potentially deadly. Carbon monoxide detectors dont detect natural gas, so that’s what the odorous additive is for.
Inhaling natural gas causes nausea, headaches, dizziness, and makes you just generally woozy, and eventually causes you to lose consciousness and potentially suffocate, just like carbon monoxide does. We don’t want that.
5. DO call the fire department/emergency line
They’ll check for other leaks, shut gas off if needed, then test for air quality and eventually clear your house for reentry. It takes like 1-2 hours for the gas to dissipate, generally.
Yay, you survived! Congrats!!
NOTE: if you find the stove has been left on with a flame, or it’s on with no flame but you don’t smell gas, then you should be safe to just open windows and turn on vents and fans to air it out.
idk, this was actually pretty scary, especially when we realized how much of our immediate response was wrong and could have turned a dangerous situation into a real disaster.
tl;dr: If you smell gas when you shouldn’t be smelling gas, just get all the people and animals outside, shut off the gas line, and call the fire department or gas company. don’t fuck around with gas. you’re not overreacting, you’re taking the proper safety measures.
**CORRECTED FROM ORIGINAL VERSION. Original said propane, but it’s very much not propane, it’s methane. too much Hank Hill on the brain, clearly.
^
Yes to all of this! Additionally, if you had the misfortune to be living in a shitty rental house in **redacted**, you might just evacuate the house with your roommates, only to have the gas company guy come back out and say, with haunted eyes: “did you know that raw sewage is being pumped into your basement.”
And we also DID have a gas leak.
As someone whose house almost exploded last year because of a leak in the line leading into my house, please pay attention to the above. This is very good information.
Hey kids! When this happens, which it does a LOT, you call your states insurance commissioner’s office and file a formal complaint! Make sure you get a reference number for EVERY. SINGLE. CALL. you make, save every form of correspondence (email and mail) AND retain a copy of all your responses. If they stonewall you (That’s not a covered service, we’re not allowed to disclose that, etc) request a copy of your benefits, insurance is a CONTRACT and is legally binding.
Download a call recording app if you can, even if you can’t share the recordings at first they can be useful for your reference and can be presented if you need to go to court.
I work with insurance companies all day everyday and have so for almost a decade. I trust them as much as I trust my dog to watch the Thanksgiving turkey. Approach each interaction with them *like* it’s going to go to court.
Hey! I’m gonna assume you guys like using Tumblr correct? What about AO3? TikTok? Or any other platform that fandom spaces thrive? Then you need to give a fuck about the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA).
KOSA is a act currently being talked about in congress that is labeled as a act that prevents minors from seeing 18+ content. It being labeled as that seems okay and good, yes, but that’s not what this bill is about.
KOSA, if put in place, will make so the attorney general of each state gets to pick which platforms will be banned in their state. And this doesn’t been censorship of minors, this means censorship of everyone of ALL AGES.
“My attorney general wouldn’t ban this sites.” Yes, they might not. But don’t think about yourself right now. MILLIONS of people will be without spaces to escape too. Millions of people will be without access to websites that allows them to talk to people. Millions of queer people wouldn’t be allowed on to places they were originally welcomed.
“Okay? But they’re only trying to ban nsfw content?” And what do all republications see as nsfw? Queer people. Especially trans people.
KOSA is just another bill that will allow nation wide bans on topics such as sex, gender, sexuality, and more. This act does nothing more except erase queer people from online spaces, and further pushes the anti-trans beliefs (and genocide) circling our country right now.
Y’all need to give a shit about this bill like you should still be giving a shit about the RESTRICT ACT (which still hasn’t been turned down yet btw).
This act opens the door from any site such of tumblr and quotev to be banned, to YouTube if your AG doesn’t like it for ANY reason. And don’t forget, VPN’s can only do so much, and the government already wants to ban those.
What can you do? CALL YOUR FUCKING CONGRESS REPS. EMAIL THEM. I don’t give a shit, all I care about is this bill that doesn’t speak for the people getting blocked and not being put in place. Bills like this further push our nations descent into facism. And if there’s a way to prevent that, we better fucking do it.
[ID: a link preview of a stock image coffee table with a laptop with the facebook logo on the screen with text on top that says ‘anyone who used facebook in the last 16 years can now get settlement money. here’s how.“ end ID]
Time Sensitive- Apply before August 25th, 2023 (8/25/23)!
Filing a claim takes less than ten minutes, and can be done HERE
Excerpt from article:
Anyone in the U.S. who used Facebook in the last 16 years can now collect a piece of a $725 million settlement by parent company Meta tied to privacy violations — as long as they fill out a claim on a website set up to pay out money to the social network’s users.
The settlement stems from multiple lawsuits that were brought against Facebook by users who claimed that the company improperly shared their data with third-party sources such as advertisers and data brokers. The litigation began after Facebook was embroiled in a privacy scandal in 2018 with Cambridge Analytica, which scraped user data from the site as part of an effort to profile voters.
Meta denied any liability or wrongdoing under the settlement, according to the recently created class-action website. However, the agreement means that U.S. residents who used Facebook between May 24, 2007, and December 22, 2022, can file a monetary claim as long as they do so before August 25, 2023.
Please reblog to signal boost this! As many people as possible should know about this to make their claim, if you don’t do anything you don’t get anything. It takes less than ten minutes to file and pick your payment option including pay/pal and ven/mo .
