Nine workers at the IHOP restaurant in the Shops at Trace Fork along Corridor G were taken to the hospital Friday morning after a worker mixed chemicals and released a cloud of hazardous material into the air.
About 50 people were inside the restaurant at about 9:15 a.m. when an employee added the wrong chemical to a dishwasher used to clean restaurant hardware.
South Charleston Fire Department Capt. Virgil White said the two chemicals — a degreaser and a chlorine-based cleaner — are used in routine cleaning at the restaurant and were mixed together in a way that created “hazardous air quality.”
Although the employees are familiar with the cleaning products used, White said, the employee “may have grabbed the wrong bottle to do his mixture with and it created this problem.”
One IHOP employee, who asked not to be identified, said “there was a big cloud of smoke and it filled up the air. It smelled like straight bleach.”
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