Oconomowoc Arts Center Evacuated - Air Quality Issues

MNicolai

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Theater at the high school I went to has been evacuated today. Attached high school fully evacuated as well.

Choir rehearsal was on-stage where several students began to feel ill and pass out. Being investigated as a carbon monoxide leak but cause is unknown at this time.

Students who have been hospitalized have been released in good condition. Additional students who did not initially present symptoms started to feel ill when returned to their middle school. EMS has been dispatched to their location.

Hazmat on-site investigating. Just set up what appeared to be a decontamination zone outside of building near lobby.

It's a 750-seat theater with full fly loft, which was an addition to the high school. Theater and auxiliary spaces are a compartmentalized structure and do not share HVAC with the school.

Bus company that delivered the students to the school has investigated the bus and not found any irregularities. Hazmat has not investigated the bus yet.

EDIT: 70 people have been transported to local hospitals

EDIT #2:

Latest article

WAUKESHA COUNTY, Wis. —

Seventy-three people were treated at Waukesha County hospitals after a morning "air quality issue" at Oconomowoc High School, an official said.

Authorities were called to the school, at 641 E. Forest St., at 9:22 a.m. after several students reported breathing issues and nauseousness, Western Lakes Fire Chief Brad Bowen said.

A county hazardous materials team was called in after first responders found nearly one dozen sick students and staff members at the school. Tests showed low levels of carbon monoxide, but Bowen said officials couldn't immediately determine the source, adding that school buses that transported students to school were also being checked.

"My daughter called me. She (was) singing choir at the theater, I guess, and she fainted. So they brought her to the nurses room. She called me from there so she told me about it," parent Jen Coates told WISN 12 NEWS.

Students and staff were not allowed to re-enter the building before they were sent home for the day. All classes and after school activities were canceled.

A determination about Friday's schedule was not immediately made.

Bowen said 32 patients were treated at ProHealth Oconomowoc Memorial Hospital. Another 32 were treated at Aurora Medical Center in Summit. Some were transported by ambulance while others arrived later in their own vehicles.

Source
 
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This morning's press release from the fire dept attached discussing the timeline of events and mass casualty/hazmat response.

Latest numbers:
  • 64 students/faculty were transported to hospital by ambulance
  • 40 walk-ins at local hospitals
  • 72 people evaluated and treated on-site by EMS
Mid-afternoon today the environmental monitoring systems that have been deployed in the theater wing detected CO levels within the safe exposure limits, but they have continued to cancel events/school while they isolate and identify the source of the emissions.

A group of middle school students from Silver Lakes Intermediate were in the high school’s auditorium practicing for a choir concert when they first noticed something was wrong.

“I was singing all of a sudden my vision goes black and my body starts violently shaking and then next thing I know I am being held up by two or three people,” said Meghan Coates, a 7th Grade student.

"With the size of the high school having to go through and go to each of the condensers and furnaces and find out which one it potentially is a bit of a process," Chief Bowen said.

Initially investigators reported low levels of CO. That changed as more people were assessed. It's important to point out, the school had working CO detectors -- but they weren't going off. Chief Bowen said, with so many people coming and going -- and doors opening and closing -- that may have impacted the alarm.

https://www.jsonline.com/story/comm...ool-due-possible-air-quality-issue/449092002/
http://fox6now.com/2018/03/22/oconomowoc-high-school-evacuated-over-possible-air-quality-issue/
https://www.tmj4.com/news/local-new...ere-oconomowoc-carbon-monoxide-leak-came-from
 

Attachments

  • EaVbP-1521763212-Press Release Oconomowoc.pdf
    424.8 KB · Views: 9
A friend who works at the Arts Center speculated that it could have come from a bus/truck that was parked next to the building but still running, the exhaust could have traveled into the HVAC system and started some of this.
Not sure how accurate it may/may not be.

I do know that I have been able to smell exhaust from a tour bus while working inside of a theatre before, the exhaust got sucked in by the HVAC.
 
It is colossally stupid to locate an HVAC intake near ground level, but it isn't all that uncommon, especially in older buildings. At one time, we had a large, radio performance studio with an air intake about 12 feet above ground. It was right next to a service road, and it was common for all kinds of delivery trucks to park next to it with the engine running, leading to nasty fumes inside.

Posting signs warning not to idle engines helped, but didn't completely prevent incidents. The permanent fix would have been to duct the intake higher up the building. There's a reason most modern buildings have the intakes on the roof.
 
This is the layout of the structures below. All of the outside air is on the roof.

Not sure where the bus was idling. Could've been in any of the drop-off zones, loading dock, or faculty lot. Wherever it was, it would be pretty extraordinary for a high enough concentration of exhaust to have gotten into the building.

upload_2018-3-29_15-10-46.png

Seems the highest level of CO measured in the building so far has been 5ppm, which is below both OSHA and ASHRAE standard. Generally you need 400ppm over an hour to get a headache and 1000ppm over an hour to fall unconscious. Given they were singing and playing instruments, that timeline could've been accelerated but simply put -- that room would've had to have been flooded with CO, yet EMS, Hazmat, and the environmental consultant didn't pick up anything outside of the ordinary, and the CO alarms in the building never went off.

Best theories I've seen so far are that something happened involving the school bus while the students were being brought over from their middle school 15min away, and/or that the students were nervous in anticipation for that night's concert and a psychosomatic effect ensued.

One of the oddities being that while the theater doesn't share HVAC with the school, symptoms were observed in both areas.

At this stage it's not likely they'll ever discover the what precisely happened.
 
I'm not a biochemist, but 5ppm wasn't the problem here.

Unless there was an exhaust leak, as you suggest, *into the bus*, and the first group of students succumbed to that -- I don't think CO takes that long to affect you, though.
 
I have found that I never have just one student feel sick during a rehearsal. There is a domino effect once one of them starts to feel light headed. Not to say that there wasn't something at play here, just noting my observations.
 
Am guessing that blood tests were taken so we may have to wait for those results. HVAC usually only brings in 10 or 15% outside air, the mix is likely controlled by an oxygen sensor. (data from that sensor may have been logged ) That and the distant proximity of the intake point to the bus ride as the suspect source.
 

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