HOWLAND — “It was something in the water,” Howland fire Capt. Brian Pugh said about the rancid smell that evacuated the Phantom Fireworks plant on Larchmont Avenue NE for about 90 minutes on Monday afternoon.

A 35-year-old maintenance worker had passed out because of the smell, according to a Trumbull County 911 report. After regaining consciousness, the worker said he didn’t feel right and was taken to St. Joseph Warren Hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening, Pugh said.

Pugh said the smell came about when maintenance crews flushed the sprinkler system. Howland fire crews later found the smell originated in a sump pump.

One member of the Trumbull County Hazardous Materials team was on the scene “to confirm our findings,” Pugh said.

Dominion East Ohio Gas officials arrived about 12:30 p.m. and told company officials it was not a natural gas leak.

The building, which held 50 to 60 workers at the time, was evacuated, with everyone accounted for, by 12:30 p.m., the report states. Some of the workers sat on the picnic table outside the front gate or in their cars parked along the driveway to the northernmost section of the former Delphi Packard complex before getting the all-clear sign to return to work about 1:25 p.m.

“Some of us got the call when we were outside for lunch,” worker DeRon Wilson of Youngstown said.

Another Phantom employee, Ronald Watson of Youngstown, said he was glad nothing major happened at the plant that contains highly explosive material.

“We are praying for the worker who got sick. We don’t want nothing bad to happen to him,” Watson said.

No updated condition of the man was available. His identity was not disclosed but it is believed the man worked in Phantom’s maintenance department.