KazTransGas Seeks to Calm Tbilisi Residents' Gas Leak Fears

UPDATED 15/09/2016: 14:00. The strong smell of gas was noticed by residents around Tbilisi starting Wednesday morning. Accounts were heard from Saburtalo, Vake, Sololaki, Mtatsminda village and even from a residential settlement near Tsavkisi.

IPN claims that over 3,000 calls had been made to emergency services by worried citizens by noon Wednesday. At present, the gas company is not responding to calls.

In an official announcement published by DF Watch, KazTransGas claims that there is no gas leak and nothing for citizens to be concerned about. "The odour comes from a special odorant, not natural gas itself, as the latter has no odor," KazTransGas stated. "Odorant is being added to the natual gas in order to prevent its leakage," they added. "The odorant is absolutely safe and its addition is required by law."

Rustavi2 announced that 11 people were taken to hospital with symptoms of intoxication throughout the day on Wednesday. "The poisoning was caused by natural gas," emergency services confirmed.

UPDATE: KazTranGas noted that the company is not responsible for the process of odorization of gas as the duty is undertaken by the Georgian Gas Transportation Company, which itself made a special announcement about Wednesday's events. The company claims that no technical problems were detected. 11 people were hospitalized with symptoms that are characteristic to gas poisoning and the company claims that the health conditions of each patient were carefully examined. In none of the cases could gas poisoning be confirmed and all patients were discharged from hospital the same day.

The same announcement repeats that odorant is not hazardous to health and that although the process of odorization was carried out manually by qualified staff members on Wednesday, in future the whole process will be carried out automatically using a mechanized system.