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More than a week after a manhole cover blew off and smashed through the windshield of a car driving along Georgia Avenue in Wheaton on Jan. 25, investigators are no closer to finding what caused the freak accident.

Washington Gas officials have stayed on the scene all week and still have no indication of what caused the fly-off, and they are not yet entertaining any theories, said spokesman Ruben Rodriguez. The incident led to road closures, evacuated homes and rush-hour backups as investigators tried to solve the mystery – and the investigation continues. But the area should be safe for walkers and drivers, said Cpl. Dan Friz, spokesman for Montgomery County Police Department.

"If there were some fear this was going to happen again immediately, the roads would be shut down," he said.

The manhole, which is now safely covered again, is the property of Verizon.

Verizon spokeswoman Sandra Arnette said there was nothing in the company's phone system that could have led to an explosion under the manhole.

"We really don't know what happened," she said.

At about noon Jan. 25, a woman was driving a Mercedes Benz SUV northbound on Georgia Avenue near the intersection of Plyers Mill Road when the manhole cover sprang off and struck her passenger, Joellen Maureen Kenney, 63, of the 200 block of Broad Street in Berlin, Md., which is near Ocean City. The car is registered to Eleanor Yano, a 63-year-old Bethesda resident, but police haven't confirmed she was the actual driver.

Kenney was rushed to Suburban Hospital in Bethesda with severe trauma to her face and hands and was flown a day later to the Adams Cowley Shock and Trauma center at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, where doctors performed reconstructive surgery on her face and hands. She's in critical but stable condition, according to nurses at the center.

Soon after the accident, county police noticed a foul smell filling the air. County Fire and Rescue Hazmat teams shut down much of Georgia Avenue in Wheaton and evacuated about 20 residents, asking another 75 to stay in their homes, as they investigated the odor with underground explosive detectors. But after four hours, they came up with nothing, and they declared the area safe shortly before 6 p.m. the same day.

Hazmat crews are unsure if the odor was related to the accident. Authorities theorize the cover went airborne either after an explosion of some type of underground gas or after the woman's car tire hit the cover at just the right angle to knock it off.

Capt. Oscar Garcia, the spokesman for Montgomery County Fire and Rescue, said it's possible the smell emanated from the dirty sewer water flowing under the manhole, which was a storm drain.

Verizon crews are waiting for Washington Gas workers to finish their investigation of a possible gas leak before starting repairs of a crack in several phone cables, Arnette said. So far, no interruption of service has been reported, and Arnette said she doesn't expect any interruption when crews fix the cracked cables.