http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/08/ny.....ap/index.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- Authorities were investigating the source of a mysterious gas-like odor Monday that stretched across a large part of Manhattan, including Rockefeller Center.
"We are confident it is not dangerous," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a news conference.
Bloomberg said the city's air sensors had not detected an elevated level of natural gas.
The Fire Department began getting calls about the odor around 9 a.m. Monday, said spokesman Tim Hinchey. No source had been identified.
Across the Hudson River, Jersey City, New Jersey, mayor's spokeswoman Maria Pignataro said officials there were told the odor was due to a gas leak in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, just north of Greenwich Village.
"When I left my apartment [in Jersey City]," Pignataro told CNN, "I walked out and immediately was hit with gas fumes. If you were in a gas station, it would be magnified 1,000 times."
"The smell was very strong. It was very scary," said Yolanda Van Gemd, an administrator at ASA, a business school near the Empire State Building that was evacuated as a precaution.
Utility officials with Consolidated Edison had no immediate comment.
In August, seven people were treated at hospitals after a gaseous smell in the boroughs of Queens and Staten Island.