Mysterious Stench Reported Around Staten Island
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Staten Island residents were complaining Friday that something stunk – though there was no information about what it was.
But residents reported it was a vile smell, with one woman comparing it to everything from feces to decomposing carcasses.
The FDNY was called to Van Duzer Street on Staten Island just before 8 a.m., but left 10 minutes later, the Staten Island Advance reported. Police also reported multiple calls, the newspaper reported.
Among those who called was Lisa Quanicella of Westerleigh, Staten Island, who spoke to 1010 WINS earlier Friday.
"We were sitting in the living room. We had the windows open because, you know, it's a beautiful day – we shut the air conditioner off. And it started around about 8 o'clock, and it was just really overwhelming. It was a really horrible smell," Quanicella said. At first we thought it was my son – you know, he's still in diapers. We thought he went to the bathroom."
She also described the smell as similar to that of a decomposing squirrel.
"One time we had a dead squirrel on our front lawn," Quanicella said. "It smelled like a rotting, like dead; like something that was decomposing."
Quanicella said she and her husband were never able to figure out the source of the smell.
"We were like maybe the sewer went up. We checked downstairs, and then my husband went out to move the garbage cans away from the curb – we thought maybe it was that."
Reports of the odor came in mostly from the North Shore of Staten Island, but they came in from all around the borough – including Dongan Hills and Grasmere, the newspaper reported.
