Three people from Scott Air Force Base in southwestern Illinois were hospitalized with rashes Wednesday and parts of the facility were evacuated after a suspicious package arrived at the base's mail center.

Capt. Kathleen Ferrero said 14 people were decontaminated on site and the three others were treated at a hospital in Belleville, Ill., then released. All were near the area of the base's mail center and may have been exposed, she said.

Air Force Lt. Benjamin Garland said the hospitalized people showed no symptoms other than the rashes.

Ferrero said she did not know what the package contained and would not address media reports that it smelled like sulphur.

With the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks less than two weeks away, Scott spokesman Thomas Kistler said no extra precautions were in place on the base. He said officials are not treating this as a potential terrorist incident.

"I think they're treating it as a normal suspicious package right now," he said.

The package discovered Wednesday morning prompted precautionary evacuations of the base's education center, bowling alley and other services near the mail center. Kistler said officials were confident there was no reason for anyone else to leave.

"We have evacuated an area around the package but we haven't enlarged the evacuation area," he said. "We don't anticipate there's any danger to the rest of the base or to the community as a whole."

Ferrero said the area had been cordoned off although she did not believe there was any immediate danger. She noted that the base routinely performs exercises for incidents like this and was ready to respond.

"We are reacting on the side of caution," she said.

Master Sgt. Jerome Baysmore said "several" firefighters at the base were overcome by heat and treated by on-base medics. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that four firefighters affected.

Traffic flowed in and out of the base through one of the main gates by late morning.

The air base is near Mascoutah, Ill., about 25 miles east of St. Louis, and serves as a global mobility and transportation hub for the Defense Department. The base is home to the U.S. Transportation Command, Air Mobility Command, the 618th Air and Space Operations Center and Air Force Network Integration Center. It is also one of four bases in the Air Force to house both a Reserve unit _ the 932nd Airlift Wing _ and an Air National Guard unit _ the 126th Air Refueling Wing.

The base's Web site says its population is 45,749.

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AP reporters Karen Hawkins in Chicago and Jim Salter in St. Louis contributed to this report.