Topeka ? Four people were taken to the hospital today and hundreds evacuated from the Docking state office building after a foul odor was detected.

Firefighters, police and military responded to the incident at Docking, which houses about 2,000 state employees and is located across the street from the Capitol.

The smell was noticed after a package was opened that contained motor vehicle title and registration documents mailed to the Kansas Department of Revenue, authorities said. The documents are regularly sent to the department from counties around the state.

After the package was opened in the morning, several workers complained of a strong odor that was described as smelling like bug spray, or gasoline or motor vehicle exhaust, Lt. John Eichkorn of the Kansas Highway Patrol said.

One woman was taken to a hospital suffering watery eyes and a scratchy throat, officials said. She was later released. Then, three more women were taken to a hospital, complaining of headaches and nausea.

“The next step is to figure out what it is the office folks were smelling,” Eichkorn said.

The smell followed the documents as they made their way from the first floor to the second floor.

Though the odor was first noticed in the morning, it wasn’t until shortly after noon that authorities were summoned. Then the evacuation began.

Eichkorn said he didn’t know why the building wasn’t evacuated sooner.

Revenue Secretary Joan Wagnon appeared on the scene about 2 p.m., saying that she had been at the doctor’s in the morning and wasn’t in the building at the time of the incident.

She sent an employee back into the building to retrieve some of her work papers. The employee had said he had been in the building earlier in the day.

Authorities had halted traffic on two blocks of the street running on the east side of the building, and asked employees to stay nearby until they could determine what the substance was that had caused the smell.

For any updates on this story, return to this site later, see the 6News report at 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. on Sunflower Broadband’s channel 6 and pick up a copy of Wednesday’s Journal-World.