By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
WALDPORT – Tests by a state agency last week at a troubled Waldport elementary school showed no toxic elements or mold still in the building that may have made some children ill in January and April.
The Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Agency spent last Thursday and Friday at Crestview Heights Elementary School, testing air in the building and checking a boiler that was the source of the original problem in January. The school has 355 students, including children from the Yachats area.
It was the third test by a state or private agency to help determine the source of noxious fumes that started with a boiler misfire Jan. 26 that sent diesel fumes into the building, forcing an evacuation and cancelling classes. The school then had similar reports of noxious smells of gas or diesel on April 2, April 10 and then twice on April 16, which led to evacuations of some classrooms.
After the last incident, parents took 14 students to Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital and causing a widespread community uproar over the problem.
“…OSHA could not find any existence of toxic elements in the school both with boilers off and boilers on,” Lincoln County School District Superintendent Karen Gray said in a letter to parents Monday. “They found nothing of concern in the air quality even when the boiler at CVH was first ignited.”
Gray said that representatives of a newly-formed parent group, the district’s insurance company, a boiler inspector and a boiler inspection company also observed the tests.
Tests for black mold and mold spores also came back negative, she said.
“We don’t think mold is a problem at this time,” she said.
The district ordered boilers off at both Crestview and Waldport middle/high school after the last incident in April.
The district also announced the details of a community meeting it is sponsoring at 5 p.m. May 14 to discuss issues at Crestview. The meeting at Seashore Family Literacy Center will include Lincoln County Health Department and OSHA representatives explaining their test results, Gray said, and details of how the school’s heating and ventilation system works.
In other developments, the district said:
- Twelve students have volunteered to be retested for carbon monoxide at the district’s expense.
- The district will “tune up” the boiler’s exhaust stacks monthly instead of twice a year. “Remember that the exhaust that comes up from the boiler goes up through the stack and into the air and is carried away by the wind,” Gray wrote. “If the wind is blowing toward the building you can smell diesel. Smelling diesel does not mean there is carbon monoxide in the air.”
- Two Waldport builders, Chris Carlson and Kyle Smallwood, are leading a Crestview parents group working with the district to help determine the problem and communicate with the community. The group has selected on a Lake Oswego environmental consultant to perform a district-financed study of the school’s air quality.