Was it carbon monoxide or gas that made O’Fallon students sick? Neither, says chief
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The 25 students and one adult from St. Clare Catholic School in O’Fallon who were taken to local hospitals last week didn’t fall ill due to a leak of natural gas or carbon monoxide, according to the O’Fallon Fire Chief.
Rather, they were experiencing psychosomatic symptoms from seeing a classmate faint, hearing adults talk about gas levels and being evacuated, he said.
“None of the kids ended up being sick from anything that was occurring at the school. It was all mostly anxiety-related issues as a result of the response,” O’Fallon Fire Chief Brad White said Thursday.
There wasn’t any carbon monoxide in the school, and while there were some natural gas leaks found in the kitchen and boiler room, the amount wasn’t enough to reduce oxygen levels to a point that would affect human health or pose a fire hazard, he said.
He described the situation as “a series of unfortunate events.”
A student fainted during morning Mass in the school’s gymnasium on April 4, which initiated the entire response that would ultimately include 10 nearby agencies in addition to O’Fallon Public Safety and Ameren Illinois.
O’Fallon-Shiloh EMS arrived at the school and requested the help of O’Fallon Fire Rescue as some additional students started reporting they weren’t feeling well with symptoms like nausea and light-headedness. The school evacuated students outside and later across the street to the chapel.
When O’Fallon Fire Rescue arrived, crews began a sweep of the building with carbon monoxide detectors, and none was detected.
A subsequent sweep for natural gas turned up results on the first floor of 100 to 300 parts per million — meaning 0.1% to 0.3% of the atmosphere was natural gas — and leaks were located in the kitchen and boiler room that needed to be fixed.
When Ameren Illinois arrived, technicians and firefighters went through every space in all three floors with detectors, which yielded the same results.
“Natural gas is not going to make you sick at that level,” White said. Natural gas robs the air of oxygen, but 0.1% to 0.3% is minuscule, he added.
“You lose more oxygen smoking cigarettes than that,” he said.
The kitchen and boiler room are adjacent to the gym, but it would have taken a lot of gas and a lot of gas flow to reach levels in the gym really needed to rob the oxygen, White said.
In hindsight, responders wouldn’t have changed their response as there were gas leaks, but “we should have keyed in on the fact that that was not what was actually causing the kids to be ill,” he said.
The student who had fainted was “legitimately ill” and not experiencing a reaction to natural gas, White said.
The conflicting messages later in the day from O’Fallon Public Safety and Ameren about what caused the incident — the former citing natural gas leaks in the kitchen and boiler room and the latter citing carbon monoxide emissions from a rooftop furnace on the gym — resulted from an internal miscommunication at Ameren Illinois that led to the unsubstantiated furnace theory being cited as the cause, White said.
Ameren Illinois did not respond to requests for comment Thursday.
The school remained closed Friday, April 5, and an HVAC company repaired the gas leaks over the weekend. School officials, the HVAC company, O’Fallon Fire Rescue and Ameren Illinois all did a walkthrough of the school Sunday and determined that everything was good and students could return Monday.
