Del Rio gas department teaches safety lesson at Ruben Chavira Elementary

The City of Del Rio’s Natural Gas Department turned a classroom visit into a public-safety lesson at Ruben Chavira Elementary, where Superintendent Danny Jalomos led students through the basics of natural gas, how it is used at home, and how to recognize a possible leak by its rotten-egg odor. The hands-on scratch-and-sniff demonstration was built to make the warning sign easy for children to remember.

On May 20, the outreach gave young students a simple but important message: natural gas has a distinct smell when warning odorants are added, and that smell should never be ignored. City staff used the lesson to show where natural gas comes from and why leak detection matters, especially when families depend on gas for everyday use at home.

The visit also highlighted the scale of the city’s utility system. The City of Del Rio owns the natural gas distribution network, serves more than 4,800 customers, and operates about 260 miles of gas mains within the city limits. That footprint makes safety education a regular public-service responsibility, not just a classroom exercise.

Ruben Chavira Elementary, at 2253 U.S. 277 in Del Rio, serves grades K-5 and has about 582 students. School listings identify Carol Sunderland as principal and list school hours from 7:50 a.m. to 3:05 p.m. With hundreds of elementary students in the building each day, the lesson reached a wide audience that can carry the information back to kitchens, living rooms and backyards across Val Verde County.

Scratch-and-sniff materials are a familiar tool in utility education because they help people connect an odor to a safety warning. Dominion Energy publicly offers a scratch-and-sniff postcard for the same reason, reinforcing the approach Del Rio used in the classroom. For local families, the takeaway was direct: know the smell, treat it as a warning and make sure children understand that a suspected gas leak is never something to shrug off.