Officials evacuated a Baltimore school Thursday afternoon after hazardous materials crews were called for a strange odor.
Fire and hazmat crews were called around 2:30 p.m. to Cristo Rey Jesuit High School. The school was evacuated and Eastern Avenue was closed near Chester Street, SkyTeam 11 reported.
Officials said dozens of students were triaged at the scene.
It turns out, the source of the irritant was a pumpkin spice air freshener, fire officials told 11 News.
“The primary readings we took within the school, we came up with negative readings. We took a secondary reading, which was also negative throughout the school,” Baltimore Fire Chief Roman Clark said.
As crews started opening windows and placing heavy fans inside the school, one of the firefighters discovered the air freshener.
“This plug-in air freshener that basically puts out the odor every so many seconds, and it’s a pumpkin spice, and that’s exactly what, if you go in there, you can smell, so it has been identified. It is not hazardous at all,” Clark said.
School President Bill Heiser told 11 News that students noticed the odor and some started coughing and having trouble breathing.
“At first, they thought, perhaps, it was a burned-out light bulb, and that was the cause of the smell,” Heiser said.
Heiser said he’s not convinced that an air freshener is to blame.
“What they did is also, as a precaution, they used fans to kind of circulate the air, and when they circulated the air, they did smell an air freshener. We don’t know that that’s the cause. It certainly wouldn’t be uncommon to blow an air freshener and then get that smell,” Heiser said.
One thing the men agree on is that evacuating the school was the right decision.
“I think the best thing to do, if there’s any concern and you have a school of 350 students and you have 50 teachers and staff, is to be safe,” Heiser said.
Imagine what would have happened if someone was wearing Drakkar Noir.
ht/ fdr in hell
I think pumpkin spice is one of those scents you can’t identify if you have dementia.
WTF is wrong with people today?
The artificial scents in cheap air fresheners make me sneeze, cough and my nose stops up. The big craze for essential oil diffusers is off the wall, and some of those scents bother me also and hit me in the nose when I walk into the home of someone who is overdoing it.
Those dang scented candles give me headaches just as certain cheap perfumes.
I had to stop wearing Shalimar because our youngest son was affected by it. And that wasnt artificial nor cheap.
LOLOLOL.
2017. Year of the pussy.
Hey, considering it’s Baltimore, be glad it’s a spray of pumpkin and not bullets.
Plain Jane- I am the same way.
But unlike the fools in the story, we manage to either leave the room or unplug the offender without shitting ourselves and calling the police. 😀
This is starting to sound like a woman’s personal hygiene product.
The Big Kid Farted toxic breeze !!!
Dayum, if that’s all it takes, let’s clear all of baltimore.
If it smelled like a meth lab they wouldn’t of cared.
This is the inner city folks. The waste land of the near future.
It’s a BOMB!!!
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IpbHlYquJuo/WdGIaCpUsvI/AAAAAAABNnA/_8t_1gbYE0Q-roa8ILEP1nfTWrmgLGH9QCLcBGAs/s640/tumblr_oly79abQQA1vczpxxo1_500.gif
Twenty years ago this headline woulda had the kids asking if there wuz a new member of the Spice Girlz…
I saw this on Twitter yesterday and thought it was satirical.
I’m quite sure it smelled better than the sulfur fragrance down here.
Every year at thanksgiving thousands die and for what, a big orange tuber? When does the madness end?
It’s NEW from FartBreeze.
organgrinder: A yam? A pumpkin is a gourd. 🙂
MJA, Yep.
However, I love the scent of gunpowder. Still think they should make a man’s aftershave that has that scent. 🙂
Correction noted.