Got Gas?

We had quite a blessing in our family. And angels are sure looking out for us. The night we were going to the play, Dan went into the basement to get some clothes out of the laundry area. All of a sudden he calls me in and asks me if I smelled gas. I sure did. The water heater is the only thing we have operating on gas. Our next question was "what do we do?" We were leaving in 5 minutes and our babysitter, Michael, just got there. We decided to turn the water heater off and see if the smell disipated, then if it did we would still go on our date and call the gas company in the morning. WARNING! Not the thing to do-normally. Well the smell seemed to go away, so we went out.
Early the next morning (it is still turned off) I call the gas company and explain the situation. The lady tells me "evacuate your house, don't turn on any lights or appliances, and don't use the land line, someone will be there within the hour" UM, the lights are all on, and I was calling from the land line. So I pack up the kids, we didn't have anywhere to go (since the tech. would be there any time and I needed to meet him) and it was pouring rain outside. So we sat in the car across the street so we wouldn't explode.
So the tech. was quick and came in 1/2 hour. Sure enough there was a gas leak, but he commented that it was very small and that he was surprised we could smell it at all. He fixed it and all is good now. Looking back, we were truly blessed and looked after. First we were able to smell it, and secondly we did so many things that you are not supposed to do with a gas leak. We could have set off a spark at any time. Really scary!
Lesson learned: if you smell gas (natural gas/propane, not the human kind :) ) get out of the house immediately and call from a different phone to the gas company to come assess the situation.