‘Gas’-lighted? Durians in Germany behind gas leak reports to firefighters three times in one day

Firefighters in a German city found themselves in one thorny situation after another when residents activated them three times in one day over gas leaks – which, in fact, turned out to be the penetrating waft of the durian fruit.

Visitors at a shopping centre in Wiesbaden, a city in the western German state of Hesse, called the fire brigade on the afternoon of Oct 4 after noticing a gas smell.

The firefighters did some checks and did not find anything amiss, German media reported.

A few hours later, they received similar reports in the same area.

This time, the firefighters searched nearby shops and found that the smell, thought to be from a gas leak, came instead from durians sold at an Asian supermarket.

“According to the authorities, the shopping centre’s ventilation system presumably distributed the smell throughout the building,” state-owned broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported on Oct 5.

Later in the evening, firefighters were once again called to an apartment building following complaints of a gas smell from a staircase.

However, it turned out that a resident had bought the thorny fruit.

The pungent smell of durian has been known to cause consternation in countries not familiar with the fruit.

In late September, a durian caused a stir in the English town of Lytham St Annes, leading a gas engineer to investigate a complaint of a “strong smell of gas”.

In October 2021, Canberra firefighters rushed to a store in the Australian capital city’s Dickson shopping precinct

after receiving reports of a gas leak

, only to find that the smell was caused by durian.

Three years before that, also in Canberra,

a university library

was evacuated because a durian was left in a bin.

Fans love the so-called “king of fruits”, which is grown across tropical South-east Asia, for its bitter-sweet flavours and creamy texture.

But the durian’s pungent odour can seem to many people like rotting garbage or a gas leak, and it is banned from many hotels and on public transport in many places, including Singapore.