I went out in the screen room this afternoon and caught the smell of natural gas. Turns out a construction crew working on a village project to replace water mains managed to hit a gas line around 2 pm. Took Nicor (gas utility) almost two hours to get here and as far as I can tell they still haven't figured out how to turn off the gas. A consulting engineer who is on the water main project said that a) the gas line was unmarked and b) the fact that it was pretty windy is working in our favor, dissipating the gas.
Looks like they won't be shutting off our gas (the break is apparently on the other side of the still-to-be-located shutoff valve) so they won't be pounding on our door in the middle of the night to come and re-light the pilot in our water heater. At least that's what the Nicor guy said. I hope he knows what he's talking about. Given that they can't figure out where the valve is, my level of confidence in their abilities is not real high right now.
(tried to post some pics but postimages is misbehaving right now)
