The Melbourne gas scare that turned out to be fruit
About 600 people left a university library in 2018 because of a durian forgotten in a cupboard.
On Saturday 28 April 2018, people in the library at RMIT University in central Melbourne reported a smell of gas. The alarm was taken seriously. New Straits Times, drawing on The Sydney Morning Herald, said fears of something worse were sharpened by the hazardous chemicals stored in the university's science labs. Mental Floss, citing Australian Associated Press, said police initially suspected a leak linked to those chemicals.
Around 600 students and staff left the building, a number given by both SBS and New Straits Times. Specialist firefighters wearing breathing apparatus arrived at about 3pm and went through the building. What they eventually found was a rotting durian in a cupboard.
The Metropolitan Fire Brigade explained how one piece of fruit could affect so many people: the odour had travelled through the air-conditioning system. By 6pm the library had reopened, New Straits Times reported, and Environment Protection Authority officers took charge of removing the waste.
The incident is often remembered with a laugh, but it says something real about durian chemistry. Researchers link the fruit's aroma to volatile sulphur compounds, and a strong, unfamiliar sulphurous smell in a closed building is exactly what people are taught to take seriously. New Straits Times made the mirror-image point from Southeast Asia, where the fruit is everywhere: there, it noted wryly, real gas leaks have been mistaken for durian. None of the reports we read named the person who left it in the cupboard.
Sources
- Date, about 600 evacuated, fire brigade on air-conditioning, EPA role
- Timing, hazardous chemicals concern, reopening at 6pm, gas leaks mistaken for durian
- Initial police suspicion and discovery in a cupboard
- Durian aroma linked to volatile sulphur compounds