{"id":304425,"date":"2026-02-27T06:07:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T06:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/304425\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T06:07:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T06:07:11","slug":"four-people-taken-to-hospital-chemical-detected-at-primary-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/304425\/","title":{"rendered":"Four people taken to hospital, chemical detected at primary school"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"St<\/p>\n

\nSt Joseph’s School in Ashburton.
\nPhoto: Google Maps\n<\/p>\n

Four people have been taken to hospital, St John ambulance says, after reports of unwell children at an Ashburton primary school where an unknown has been chemical detected.<\/p>\n

Initially St John said two people were taken to hospital from St Joseph’s School, on Friday morning. However, St John issued a statement Friday afternoon to say: “Two ambulances and one operations manager attended. Four patients, all in minor condition, were transported to Ashburton Hospital”.<\/p>\n

Fire and Emergency sent three crews to St Joseph’s School just before 10am Friday, and called for its hazmat unit from Timaru.<\/p>\n

Testing showed low readings of an unknown chemical, a FENZ spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

Firefighters left soon after and the hazmat unit was stood down before arriving.<\/p>\n

St Joseph’s School has not responded to RNZ’s requests for comment.<\/p>\n

Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"St Joseph’s School in Ashburton. Photo: Google Maps Four people have been taken to hospital, St John ambulance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304426,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-304425","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-podcasts","13":"tag-public-radio","14":"tag-radio-new-zealand","15":"tag-rnz","16":"tag-top-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-topnews","19":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}