"Toxic mushrooms" sicken 11 people, including children, in Central Pennsylvania town
Nearly a dozen people were taken to a hospital in Central Pennsylvania on Friday night after eating "toxic mushrooms," a local fire company said.
The "mass casualty" incident happened on the 200 block of Burke Road in Peach Bottom Township, York County. The township is along the western bank of the Susquehanna River and close to the Maryland border.
"Units were advised that 11 people had ingested toxic mushrooms and were all ill," the Delta-Cardiff Volunteer Fire Company, Station 57 said on Facebook. Ambulance units were called to the scene from York and Lancaster counties in Pennsylvania and Harford County, Maryland.
Six ambulances took patients to a nearby hospital, the fire company said.
The Pennsylvania State Police were also called to the scene, CBS affiliate WHP-TV in Harrisburg reported.
The fire company told the station the patients were members of an Amish family who ate wild mushrooms they found in the woods and became ill. Responders only found 10 patients at the scene and later learned a member of the family walked half a mile down the road to a phone booth and called 911, WHP reported.
All 11 people were treated overnight and released, according to the station.
The Food and Drug Administration recommends consulting with a knowledgable expert to properly identify mushrooms that are safe to eat, and says it's much safer to get mushrooms from grocery stores or professional mushroom farms.
There are about 250 varieties of poisonous wild mushrooms found across North America, according to the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control.