Smell prompts evacuation at Ben Taub hospital

(3/23/07 - KTRK/HOUSTON) (KTRK) -- A foul odor set off an evacuation of nearly a hundred people in the waiting room of Ben Taub's emergency room earlier this morning. Patients had to be taken outside in their gowns and on gurneys.

The source of the problem is still under investigation but Ben Taub's emergency center is fully operational again.

Up to 100 patients and staff members were quickly moved out of the trauma center around 8:30am. People were moved on gurneys others were seen in hospital gowns outside.

The call was made after workers complained of watery eyes and nausea. The Houston fire department called out a HazMat team but the chemical dissipated so quickly there wasn't nothing left to detect.

"HazMat came out with their monitors, they didn't find anything. They didn't detect anything. They are going to go ahead and let everyone back inside," said HFD Distric Chief Eric Hutzley. "Anything in a hospital or like what we call a 'target hazard -- we are going to go ahead and be safer than sorry."

There are a lot of chemicals stored in hospitals. But those chemicals may not be the problem.

One theory was that it could have been pepper spray perhaps carried into a patient's purse, dropped somehow and made it into the air. The incident remains under investigation.
(Copyright © 2007, KTRK-TV)

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