A school was evacuated and students hospitalized — a pumpkin spice plug-in is to blame

Oh sure, the world now has pumpkin spice-flavored M&MS and pumpkin-spice cough drops.

But not everyone likes the smell of fall.

Case in point: On Thursday, Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Baltimore was evacuated after students and teachers complained about an unusual smell wafting through the third floor.

Five people were taken to the hospital because they felt sick to their stomachs, according to USA Today.

“It was a smell that they certainly weren’t used to,” the school’s president, Bill Heiser, told The Baltimore Sun. “It appeared to be getting stronger.”

The building was evacuated, the fire department arrived, then a Hazmat team came. Tests were run, revealing nothing officially hazardous in the air.

Firefighters threw open all the windows in the building to air it out. Then someone finally found the source of the offensive odor: A pumpkin spice plug-in in a third-floor classroom.

The school’s counselor was available today for anyone needing to talk about what happened, according to a message on the school’s website.

This story was originally published October 6, 2017 at 11:24 AM with the headline "A school was evacuated and students hospitalized — a pumpkin spice plug-in is to blame."