Gas smell reported to BGE night before Bel Air home explosion (2024)

The night before a home in Bel Air exploded Sunday morning, a neighbor reported smelling gas in the area to BGE, The Baltimore Sun has learned.

Residents near the home at 2300 Arthurs Woods Drive, which exploded and killed the homeowner, Ray Corkran, and a BGE contractor, Jose Rodriguez-Alvarado, have been saying that they smelled gas Saturday night, but the State Fire Marshal’s office stated they had no record of anyone reporting that to either 911 or BGE.

But The Sun spoke to one resident, Carline Fisher, who said she reported the gas smell to BGE Saturday night and spoke to a worker who arrived in response. Given that information, a fire marshal’s spokesman contacted investigators looking into the explosion who told him that BGE indeed received a call at 8:24 p.m. Saturday.

Fisher told The Sun she “immediately” smelled gas when she left her home to walk her dogs around 8 p.m. Saturday. Fisher, who lives about a third of a mile away from Corkran’s home, said that as she walked, she said she continued to smell gas.

“I’m trying to assess it,” Fisher said. “Maybe someone was barbecuing with propane? I saw a neighbor and asked, ‘do you smell gas?'”

The neighbor said yes, and Fisher said she called BGE. Perhaps a half-hour later, a BGE truck arrived, she said, and the worker took her report. Fisher said she thought nothing more of it, until the following morning when the blast reverberated through the neighborhood.

A BGE spokesman declined to comment on Thursday, citing an ongoing investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board. He referred questions to the NTSB, which is among the agencies and other entities that have been investigating the incident. An NTSB spokeswoman said she did not have immediate answers to The Sun’s questions about how BGE handled the report of a gas smell on Saturday night.

Oliver Alkire, a spokesman and master deputy with the State Fire Marshal’s office, had said since earlier this week that he was told by investigators from his agency and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosions, that there were no calls either to 911 or BGE about a gas odor that night.

But on Thursday, Alkire said, the investigators told him they had indeed interviewed Fisher, and she had told them about calling BGE.

“It fell through the cracks,” Alkire said of the investigators initially not relaying to him what Fisher had said.

At around 6:40 a.m. Sunday, a huge blast rocked the Harford Green development, so loud and ground-shaking that Fisher, who coincidentally was working in downtown Manhattan on 9/11 when terrorists crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center, thought a plane had crashed in their midst.

Instead, the house at 2300 Arthurs Woods Drive had exploded, killing Corkran, 73, and Rodriguez-Alvarado, 35.

“What happened from the night before when I called, and now?” Fisher said she thought on Sunday as she tried to process what had happened. “I don’t know, I can’t speculate.”

There might have been some confusion over BGE’s presence in the neighborhood Saturday night because the utility company had sent a truck there about an electrical issue at Corkran’s house, Alkire said.

“This all stemmed from an electrical failure that was reported Saturday evening to BGE,” Alkire said. He declined to give more specifics about the electrical issue. But he said after BGE responded to some electrical failure at the house Saturday night, the utility decided to send a crew the next morning.

At least one resident who said he had smelled gas Saturday night told The Sun he didn’t report it because he saw a BGE truck on the street and assumed it had responded to someone else reporting the odor.

It remains unclear what happened after Fisher called BGE and spoke to the representative who arrived in response.

Alkire said that when BGE receives a call about a gas smell, it routinely calls the closest fire department, but he has no record of that happening.

“There was no fire department dispatch that evening,” he said.

Two BGE contractors, including Rodriguez-Alvarado, went to the home Sunday morning to address the electrical issue. But it was another worker, who was sent by the Miss Utility program to mark off the location of underground infrastructure before any digging, who smelled gas that morning and alerted his supervisor, who then called BGE, Alkire said.

The explosion reduced Corkran’s home to rubble and damaged homes throughout the neighborhood, some so badly that at least 12 families were displaced.

Alkire said the fire marshal and the ATF finished their on-scene investigation Sunday and released the site to other investigators including those for BGE, the NTSB and insurers. “We’re reviewing info and the data we collected and will produce a final report,” Alkire said. He did not have a time frame for when it might be completed.

A spokeswoman for the NTSB said Thursday its investigation was continuing.

“It is still early in the investigation and the team is still on scene,” Jennifer Gabris said.

She said she expected a preliminary report of the NTSB’s findings would be released in about 30 days.

Originally Published: August 15, 2024 at 5:51 p.m.