Gas shut off at mobile home park as precaution

Eric Leake

Thursday, Oct. 7, 2004 | 9:14 a.m.

Residents of Elm's Court are without natural gas and may be temporarily moved after numerous leaks were discovered at the mobile home park Monday.

Gas was turned off at the park at 3919 E. Cheyenne Ave. as a precaution after a Public Utilities Commission inspector smelled natural gas.

"If you can smell natural gas, that's not necessarily saying it could go up in flames. But if you can smell natural gas there's obviously a problem," said Rebecca Wagner, commission spokeswoman.

The inspector notified Southwest Gas Corp., which turned off the lines Monday evening. Because the park buys gas off of one master meter line and then sells it to tenants, maintenance of tenant lines are the park's responsibility.

Gas won't be restored until the lines are repaired.

Tigram Gevorgyan, representing the park owner, said residents will be relocated to a motel until the lines are fixed.

The leaks are small, he said. "They are not dangerous at all, but we want to make sure everything is safe." He suspected aged valves as the cause.

Gevorgyan did not know when gas would be turned back on to the park but said that management is working on repairs. He said 45 of the park's lots are occupied.

He blamed the gas leaks on neglect. He said the current owner bought the park a couple of months ago and recently fired the longtime manager.

"He was the person who was supposed to take care of this problem and he never took care of it," Gevorgyan said.

Roger Buehrer, spokesman for Southwest Gas, said the utility has visited Elm's Court for gas leaks before. On those visits, Southwest Gas was able to turn off gas to some individual mobile homes.

"But what we found on Monday night was much greater than that," Buehrer said. "They were bad enough that we couldn't isolate them or stop them."