The stench being emitted from one AT&T office refrigerator turned out to be so toxic that it hospitalized seven co-workers, making several others sick Tuesday in downtown San Jose, California.
An employee was prompted to call 911 after catching a whiff of the peculiar smell. The building called for an entire evacuation by firefighters around noon as the fumes became increasingly dangerous requiring the hazardous materials team to control the situation as soon as 325 employees were properly evacuated to the parking lot.
Along with hazmat, 50 firefighters and 18 ambulances hurried to the AT&T building’s rescue on North First Street.
Hazmat crews discovered that the overstuffed fridge had been unplugged long enough for the food inside to start decomposing.
After an employee decided it was time to clean out the moldy food, she began by wiping down its shelves with two different cleaning treatments, placing the leftover food in a conference room.
Between the two disinfectant chemicals’ aroma and the moldy food’s reek, employees became violently nauseous, leading them to vomit. “The combination of chemicals was an obvious no-no,” according to San Jose Mercury News.
The hazardous odor led to 28 people to be treated at the hospital. Surprisingly, the employee disinfecting the fridge was not among the hospitalized supposedly due to her loss of smell from allergies.
The fire department’s Capt. Barry Stallard said to the Mercury News that “She didn’t smell a thing,” referring to the employee who had undergone nasal surgery prior to the stinky event.
Stallard adds that the problem arrived after she placed the food aside in the conference room and brought out the two different cleaning sprays to rub down the fridge’s mess.
Despite being disrupted, AT&T employees were laughing about the longer lunch break that ended around 2:30 p.m. when they were allowed to return back to work.
While the contents of this toxic refrigerator are still unknown, many feel meat had to be in there somewhere because of the horrible smell of rotting flesh. It is safe to say that employees won’t be too concerned with retrieving their decomposing lunches any time soon.
Our Take:
This incident sure does make you want to clean out the fridge, or at least check and see if it’s plugged! Just make sure to take this incident into consideration before taking on the courageous office fridge cleaning job.
I bet this is one time when AT&T’s brave fridge cleaning employee was actually glad to have allergies blocking his sense of smell. You know its bad when the hazmat crew is called in for clean up.
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