400 Dunwoody apartment units without gas service after building explosion

DUNWOODY, Ga. — What some residents at Arrive Perimeter are calling a minor inconvenience is being done to protect them.

After a portion of the apartment building exploded Sunday afternoon, crews are actively working to determine what happened.

Atlanta Gas Light crews spent Monday evening shutting off gas lines to the entire complex after learning that there were issues to several gas lines in other buildings on the property. There are 400 apartment units in the complex.

This means that none of these hundreds of people can use their gas appliances and if their hot water tank is gas-operated, they can’t use that either.

Many residents agree, however, that this is a necessary step to keep this from happening again.

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Anna Jones says she is still in shock after having to escape from her third floor apartment.

“I could see the apartment up under me, it was completely blown out,” she told Channel 2′s Ashli Lincoln. “It still gives me knots in my stomach right now.”

Atlanta Gas Light says the directive to shut off the services comes from Dunwoody City Code enforcement officers.

“It’s pretty scary, we’re still being cautious about everything,” said resident Candace Brown.

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While the cause of the explosion is still under investigation, residents say it isn’t hard for them to consider a gas leak as the culprit after complaining about the smell for months.

“This has been an ongoing issue, a lot of residents have been complaining about smelling gas,” resident Erik Wiley said.

“We still have gas problems going on, but they haven’t fixed it yet,” said Brown. “I actually heard we might have had a gas leak years ago.”

The Arrive Perimter residents who told Channel 2 Action News that they filed formal complaints with apartment management, say they don’t know if anything was followed up with after their complaints.

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“It’s a miracle that it wasn’t a mass casualty event with something like this,” resident Mark Pate said.

Channel 2 Action News reached out to property management via phone and email to get information on if any gas leaks were reported. No one from Trinity Property Consultants, the ownership company, has returned those requests.

Crews will be checking each apartment individually for gas leaks. Until it can be confirmed that there are none, the gas will remain cut off to the facility. They do not currently have a timeline for how long that could take.

Shocking video captures screaming, smoke, chaos after Dunwoody apartment explosion Four people were injured in the blast, which tore the front half of one building off and damaged several surrounding buildings.

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