Saturday, March 06, 1999

Fumes sicken 44 schoolchildren

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Odor strong, but source unknown

BY EARNEST WINSTON and LUCY MAY
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Firefighters tend to children outside Quebec Heights Elementary School. (Glenn Hartong photo) | ZOOM |

        Noxious fumes forced the evacuation of a Price Hill elementary school Friday, sending 44 students to the hospital and panicking parents.

        The midday evacuation of Quebec Heights Elementary School triggered a massive emergency response by Cincinnati safety officials.

        Students complained of headaches, nausea and irritations of the throat and eyes. Some children said they had trouble breathing.

        Doctors at Children's Hospital Medical Center said they did not expect the children who were treated to suffer any lasting problems. By evening, all the children had been sent home, said Jim Feuer, a hospital spokesman.

        School officials said classes would resume Monday.

        As of this morning, Cincinnati Fire Division officials still did not know what made the students and some staff ill.

        Assistant Fire Chief Gary Auffart said a natural gas leak was unlikely. The fire division was checking nearby businesses as possible sources for the fumes. A fire hydrant was turned on near the school to flush out the sewers in case they were the source of fumes.

Annreca and Jason Pope with their two sons outside Children's Hospital. Jason Jr., 8 , left, had a headache and was treated. Tyrell, 6, was unaffected. (Tony Jones photo) | ZOOM |

        Many irate parents, who said they were not notified of the 11:30 a.m. incident by school officials, rushed to the school. Some were angry they couldn't drive to the front of the school because police had blocked the main street.

        The incident tied up all the city's rescue crews, forcing Cincinnati to call in mutual aid from fire departments in Cheviot, and Delhi and Green town ships.

        Just before 12:30 p.m., a rescue unit at the school rushed to the scene of a shooting in nearby English Woods when dispatchers realized there were no ambulances free to take the victim to the hospital.

        Rescue crews responded to numerous calls from residents who said they smelled fumes in their homes. No homes in the immediate area were evacuated, although fumes could be smelled within a 3-mile radius.

        “I smelled it at home,” said Tamela Thames, who lives six blocks from the school. “It was like a gassy odor.” At first, she said, she thought the stove was leaking but the odor grew stronger.

        Ms. Thames' two daughters, Shenelle Johnson, 12, and Rayanna Thames, 7, were treated at Children's for nausea and stomach pains.

        “It was really strong, so bad we had to do like this,” said fifth-grader Christine Atwood, as she held her nose. Her mother, Tammy, a crossing guard at Quebec, said she was notified of the incident by a fellow crossing guard who paged her at 12:15 p.m.

        Students who were not sick were taken to Elder High School in yellow school buses and Metro buses, and parents picked them up there.

        Ms. Atwood picked her daughter up at Quebec, before students were taken to Elder. By 4:30, Christine was at home with a headache. “She's not going to go back to school Monday until they figure out what happened,” Ms. Atwood said.

        “They were not prepared for this. Just the way they had the streets blocked off. ... They let the media down there but they wouldn't let us parents get down.”

        At Children's, school bus No. 1661 pulled up to the emergency entrance shortly after 1 p.m. Students left the bus slowly in single file and walked into the emergency room to have their blood tested for carbon monoxide.

        None of the children had unusually high levels of the gas in their blood by the time they arrived at the hospital, said Dr. Javier Gonzalez-Del-Rey, the emergency-room doctor in charge of emergency-preparedness programs.

        Children who complained of headaches or nausea were given oxygen at the hospital, and nearly all the children had a doctor and nurse to themselves.

        Parents also rushed to the hospital after hearing about the problems at the school. Hospital staff were ready with graham crackers and orange juice for the children and their parents.

        Annreca Pope was interviewing for a job as a patient escort at the hospital when the school was evacuated. After the job interview, she got a frantic message from her husband that something had gone wrong at Quebec Heights, which their two sons attend.

        “I rushed to the emergency room,” Mrs. Pope said. “There were a lot of parents and it was really congested. I just started crying. I didn't know what to think.”

        Jason Jr., 8, a third-grader at Quebec Heights, had a headache and was taken to the hospital to be treated. Tyrell, 6, a first-grader, wasn't experiencing any symptoms and was taken to Elder High School with other students. That's where his dad, Jason Pope Sr., picked him up.

        Mr. and Mrs. Pope said they were pleased with the way the school and hospital staff handled the scary situation.

        “They did an excellent job,” Mrs. Pope said.

        After leaving the hospital around 2 p.m., the Pope family headed to Frisch's. Hospital staff had passed out Frisch's valentine gift certificates to all the kids.

        Tanya Bricking contributed to this report.

Lack of calls angers parents

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