Gas Smell in the Kitchen: What to Do in Delhi

I can smell gas in my kitchen. What do I do right now?

In this order, calmly and quickly.

• 1. No flame, no spark, nothing electrical. Do not light anything. Do not turn any switch on or off — the tiny spark inside a switch is enough. That means lights, exhaust fan, chimney, geyser, gas lighter, matches, agarbatti, diya, mosquito coil, and the doorbell. Leave whatever is already on exactly as it is.
• 2. Open doors and windows on your way past them. Physically open them by hand. Fresh air moving through the room is the one thing that genuinely helps while you leave. Do not stay behind to ventilate.
• 3. Turn the gas off only if it is right there and safe. If a burner knob has been left open and you can see it, turn the knob off. If the cylinder regulator or the piped-gas isolation valve is within arm’s reach on your way out, turn it off. If reaching it means walking toward the smell, moving things, or hunting for it, skip this step and go.
• 4. Get everyone out. Children, elderly family members, domestic help, pets. Out of the flat, and then out of the building or into open air. Knock on doors by hand; do not ring bells.
• 5. Use the stairs, not the lift. A lift is an electrical machine, and in an LPG leak it can also carry you through the lowest part of the building where heavier gas settles.
• 6. Call from outside, not from inside. Once you are in open air, well away from the building, call your gas supplier’s emergency line and the fire service. Tell them it is a suspected gas leak, and give the full address including block and floor.
• 7. Do not go back in. Not for documents, not for the phone, not to check. Wait for the technician or the fire service to say it is clear.

What you must never do when you smell gas

This list is short because it is absolute. None of these has an exception.

• Never look for the leak with a flame, a lighter, a match or a candle. This is the single most dangerous thing anyone does with gas.
• Never operate any electrical switch or appliance in the area — not on, not off. That includes light switches, fans, the exhaust fan, the chimney, the fridge, the inverter, the doorbell and the lift.
• Never use your phone inside the affected space. Step outside into open air first, then call.
• Never try to repair, tighten, tape, clamp or re-seat anything. Not the rubber tube, not the regulator, not the pipe, not the burner, not the meter. There is no household repair for a gas leak, and an amateur repair that seems to work is worse than an obvious leak because it hides the problem.
• Never let an unauthorised person work on your gas. Only the supplier’s own trained technician, or a mechanic they authorise, should touch a cylinder connection, a regulator, a meter or a piped-gas line. This is not a job for a general handyman, a plumber or a neighbour who is good with tools.
• Never assume it has cleared because the smell faded. Smell is not a measurement. A leak can continue at a rate you stop noticing, and heavier LPG can still be sitting at floor level in a room that smells fine at head height.
• Never restart anything yourself after a leak. Let the technician check the installation and relight or recommission it.

LPG cylinder or PNG pipeline: does it change anything?

The emergency response is exactly the same for both. The differences only matter for where the gas collects and who you call.

• LPG from a cylinder is heavier than air. It sinks and pools at floor level, under the platform, behind the cabinet, in a sunken area, in a stairwell or a basement. A kitchen that smells only faintly at standing height can be holding gas near the floor. This is also why a cylinder should never be kept in a basement, a pit, or a closed box.
• PNG through a pipeline is lighter than air. It rises and gathers near the ceiling and in the upper part of a closed room, and it will move upward through a building.
• Who you call is different. LPG goes to your cylinder distributor and the bottling company’s emergency line; PNG goes to your piped-gas company’s emergency line. Both numbers are printed on your bill, your booking receipt or the supplier’s official website. Write them down now — see our emergency numbers and shut-offs sheet.
• Many Delhi kitchens have both. Households that have switched to PNG often keep an LPG cylinder as a backup, and some keep a second cylinder connected for a separate burner. If you smell gas, shut down and evacuate as above; the technician will work out which one it is.

We deliberately do not print any emergency number on this page. Numbers change, and a wrong number during a gas leak costs minutes you do not have. Look up the current one from your own bill or the supplier’s official site, and keep it on paper where you can find it without a phone.

How do I reduce the chance of a gas leak at home?

Nothing makes a gas installation risk-free, but a few habits remove most of the ways leaks start in Delhi kitchens. All of these are things you do around the gas, not to it.

• Turn the knob off at the regulator or the isolation valve every night. A closed valve cannot leak overnight. This one habit does more than everything else on this list.
• Replace the rubber tube before it expires. LPG tubes carry a marked life and they harden, crack and perish in Delhi’s heat well before they look bad. Use an ISI-marked tube of the correct length and let the supplier’s technician fit it. Do not join two tubes, and do not run a tube behind a hot oven or over a sharp edge.
• Keep the cylinder upright, at floor level, in a ventilated space. Never in a sealed cabinet, never in a basement or a sunken store, never lying down, never near a heat source, and never used as a stand for anything.
• Keep the kitchen ventilated while cooking. A window or a permanent vent matters more in a small closed Delhi kitchen than most people assume, and it also helps a small leak disperse instead of collecting.
• Never leave a burner unattended, especially with a tall vessel or a pressure cooker that can boil over and put the flame out while the gas keeps flowing. If a flame blows out, turn the knob off and ventilate before relighting.
• Have the installation checked by the supplier’s technician periodically. Distributors and piped-gas companies run inspections; take them when offered, and ask for the tube, regulator and connections to be looked at.
• Consider a gas leak detector for the kitchen. A detector does not prevent a leak, but it can warn you of one you cannot smell, particularly at night. Fit it as the manufacturer specifies for your fuel, and treat any alarm as a real leak.
• Teach everyone in the house the sequence. Children, elderly relatives and domestic help should all know: no switches, no flame, open the door, get out, call from outside.

After the technician has been: what next?

Get the cause in writing, and treat it as a prompt to check the rest of the kitchen.

• Ask what actually failed — tube, regulator, burner, joint, or a knob left open. If a part failed from age, the other parts are the same age.
• Do not relight or recommission anything before they say so, and keep the area ventilated until then.
• Check what else is near the gas. An extension board on the floor beside a cylinder, a chimney with heavy grease, curtains close to the burner, or plastic containers on the platform edge are all small things that make a bad day worse. Our home fire safety basics guide covers the kitchen properly.
• Put the numbers on the fridge. If this incident taught you anything, it is that you should not be searching for a supplier’s emergency number while standing outside your own building.

For everything else in the flat that is worth knowing before it goes wrong — the water valve, the main switch, the pump — our home water emergency guide and the shut-offs sheet are the companions to this page. And if you are unsure which trade handles what, who to call for home repairs sorts it out — with the one exception on this page: gas goes to the gas supplier, always.