News

Suspicious smell evacuates county building

By Vera Chinese

A building at the Suffolk County Center in Riverside was closed for several hours Thursday morning due to a suspicious smell, county officials said.
The Surrogate Court at the Evans K. Griffing County Center was evacuated as a precaution due to the odors emitted from welding being done on the building, authorities said.
“The odor and fumes got into the circulation system,” said county spokesman Mark Smith, adding that the building reopened that same afternoon.
The adjacent building, which contains the county labor department and county legislature offices, remained open during the incident.
County sources said the building was closed for a similar reason two weeks ago.

Vera Chinese has been the editor of northforker.com and northforker magazines since May 2014. Prior to that she spent two and a half years as a staff reporter for the New York Daily News. She joined the Riverhead News-Review as a staff writer in January 2010 and was named Associate Web Editor nine months later. She previously worked for the Southampton Press Western Edition and was named the third place 2008 Rookie Reporter of the Year by the New York Press Association. She graduated from Wagner College in 2006 where she received a bachelor's degree in English. She earned a master's degree in English education from New York University in 2007. She is a 2002 graduate of Eastport High School and has lived on the East End for more than 20 years.

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