NAUSEATING SMELL FROM SEA GIVES RISE TO WAR SCARE

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 October 1948, Page 6

NAUSEATING SMELL FROM SEA GIVES RISE TO WAR SCARE

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 15. A nauseating smell that floated into San Francisco Bay from the sea today caused panic in several suburbs, when a rumour spread that an unknown enemy was making a gas attack Housewives flashed the rumour to their friends by telephone, and within minutes weeping mothers dashed into the streets, carrying their children. Other people frantically sealed up their windows and doors with adhesive tape. The smell seeped in from the sea about noon. It covered a 30-mile stretch of the coast, and worked inland until it became lost among other smells in a refinery area. It was more pungent at the upper levels, and workers in the top floors of buildings poured into the streets as the smell became unbearable. The telephone switchboards of gas companies, newspapers, police stations, and hospitals were jammed with thousands of calls from people either reporting smells, or wanting to know whether it was a gas attack. Experts are baffled about the cause of the smell. Some think an acid refuse barge may have been unloaded offshore. Others say that a slight submarine earth movement, opened a fissure in the ocean floor, and released a petroleum bubble.