Waldport school closed Thursday and Friday for tests of building issues

 

By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com

Waldport’s only elementary school is closing for two days this week so a state agency in charge of workplace safety can help the Lincoln County School District determine the source of noxious fumes bedeviling parts of the school.

The district moved parent-teacher conferences at Crestview Heights Elementary School to Wednesday and is closing the school Thursday and Friday so Oregon Occupational Safety and Health can test the building. Crestview has 356 students, including youngsters from the Yachats area.

OSHA is testing “at our request,” Superintendent Karen Gray told YachatsNews.com on Tuesday.

It will be 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 sending diesel fumes into the building, forcing an evacuation and cancellation of classes. The school then had similar reports of noxious smells of gas or diesel on April 2, April 10 and then twice again last Tuesday, April 16, which led to evacuations of some classrooms.

Last week’s incident resulted in parents taking 14 children to Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital in Newport to be tested for carbon monoxide exposure – and widespread clamor in the Waldport community to more quickly find the source of the problem.

After Tuesday’s incident, Gray ordered the boilers at Crestview and the adjacent Waldport middle/high school shut down for two to four weeks to help determine if they were the source of the fumes.

Gray said OHSA specialists will test the building with the boilers off and on.

“That’s why we asked to have no school Thursday – we didn’t want anyone in the building,” she said in a letter to parents. Classes were already cancelled Friday because it was a negotiated day off for teachers.

Gray said that OSHA’s results will be compared with test results from PBS Environmental and Engineering, which the district paid for, and by the State Accident and Insurance Fund, which initiated its own investigation. Both found no levels of carbon monoxide or other toxics, she said.

Gray also said:

• The district has asked the state’s boiler inspection agency to take a look at the three boilers at the Waldport school complex. District facility workers have already cleaned and replaced boiler parts and filters and found them to be working properly.
• The boiler exhaust stack at Crestview is being raised eight feet to help keep fumes from blowing into the school.
• Replacing the diesel boilers – common at rural schools without access to natural gas – with electric boilers could cost as much as $1 million and cost $350,000 a year to operate.
• The district is initiating an environmental study by a company to be selected by a committee of Crestview parents and principal Libba Sager. The committee will oversee the study.
• The district has tentatively scheduled a facilitated community meeting from 5-6:15 p.m. Tuesday, May 14 prior to a school board meeting already scheduled at the school.

“We do not know the source of the issue; I want to find out,” Gray said. “But I don’t know if there is a ‘smoking gun’.”

Last week’s turmoil was exacerbated by an emailed news release from Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital that was widely circulated in Waldport the day after parents brought their children in for carbon monoxide tests. The release said the normal level for carbon monoxide in blood was 0.5 percent to 1.5 percent. Many children tested apparently had levels around 4 percent.

But that directly contradicted medical opinions offered by the Poison Control Center at Oregon Health Science & University in Portland. The center is an expert in carbon monoxide exposure and Newport hospital officials had encouraged people to call it with their concerns.

Doctors at the center told the school district and YachatsNews.com last week that a carbon monoxide blood reading of less than 5 percent is of no concern and that it could even be safely higher in children because of their higher respiratory rate.