Canberra’s emergency services say a “pungent smell” that resulted in people being warned to avoid a local shopping centre amid fears of a gas leak was actually caused by a piece of fruit.
On Friday, the ACT’s Fire and Rescue department confirmed a shopping centre in the suburb of Dickson was cleared due to fears of a gas leak.
After an hour spent searching for the leak, firefighters confirmed the source of the smell was “in fact a durian fruit”.
“The fruit gives off a very pungent smell and can waft some distance,” the fire agency said in a statement.
“After an hour on scene, as firefighters were searching for the source, the owners of a tenancy above the shops advised of the potential source of the incident. After a short investigation, crews confirmed this was the origin of the incident. Crews have now departed.”
Earlier the ACT’s Emergency Services Agency had issued a “hazardous materials – gas leak” warning asking people to “avoid the area” of the Dickson shops.
Update - HAZMAT (Gas Leak) - Dickson Shopshttps://t.co/9MUokP6rcY pic.twitter.com/srkb0zfKMN
— ACT ESA (@ACT_ESA) October 15, 2021
Durian-related incidents have become relatively common in Australia in recent years. The Malaysian fruit is extremely popular across south-east Asia but has an extremely pungent odour and is banned from some hotels and public transport.
It is the second durian-related evacuation in the ACT in the past two years. In 2019, a University of Canberra library was evacuated due to “a strong smell of gas” which also turned out to be coming from the fruit. It was later found near an air vent on the library’s second level and was eventually removed in a sealed bag.
A year before that, in 2018, about 600 staff and students at the RMIT campus in Melbourne’s CBD had to be evacuated as almost 40 firefighters, including specialist crews, searched the building for a feared gas leak.
