HANAMA’ULU — Diluted herbicide dumped on a cane road near King Kaumuali’i School is the suspected source of a noxious odor that forced evacuation of the school’s 850 students Tuesday and sent more than 50 children and two teachers to
HANAMA’ULU — Diluted herbicide dumped on a cane road near King Kaumuali’i
School is the suspected source of a noxious odor that forced evacuation of the
school’s 850 students Tuesday and sent more than 50 children and two teachers
to Wilcox Memorial Hospital for treatment.
Kaua’i Fire Capt. Myles
Moriguchi said that either Amfac workers or a contractor for Amfac flushed
pendimethalin, which was apparently mixed with water, from a tank on a truck on
the road about 600 yards north of the school at about 9:30 a.m.
The odor
from the herbicide floated to the school and what the students smelled came
from that area, Moriguchi said.
The chemical, which goes by the trade name
of Prowl, is slightly toxic when ingested, inhaled or absorbed through the
skin. It is highly toxic to fish.
The students who became ill complained of
being teary-eyed and having stomach pains. Some were initially treated by
American Medical Response paramedics, and then transferred to Wilcox where they
were treated and released.
“Some of the asthmatic students got in a little
bit of trouble,” said paramedic John Blatt. “Other than that, we have got a lot
of sore bellies, which may be from the gas or anxiety.”
Students returned
to school today.
The chemical was flushed onto the ground about 9:30 a.m.
after a helicopter had finished spraying cane fields in East Kaua’i, Moriguchi
said.
Amfac employees or other workers, he said, apparently flushed the
chemical out of the tank on a truck while preparing to fill the tank with
another chemical.
The state Department of Health is expected to begin a
review of the incident and could bring it to the attention of the
Environmental Protection Agency for possible citation, county officials
indicated.
By 4 p.m. yesterday, authorities proclaimed the herbicide fumes
no longer dangerous, and Amfac crews had begun the cleanup.
The Kaua’i
Fire Department received a call about the spill at 10:09 a.m. and arrived at
the school at 10:14 a.m. For safety reasons, the Kauai Police Department closed
off all roads leading to the school.
Following an evacuation of the school,
teachers walked the school’s 850 students to a county park upwind from the
school.
Kauai District School Superintendent Daniel Hamada, who was at the
park, said the evacuation went off without any problems because students
practice evacuation drills once a month.
At the park, paramedics initially
treated 20 of the students and then transported them by ambulance to Wilcox
Hospital. Others were transported by school buses.
With help from the
Kaua’i police, the rest of the students were bused to the Kaua’i War Memorial
Convention Hall, where they were picked up by their parents.
Some parents
picked up their children before they were transported to the Convention Hall.
Juvie Tanicala of Hanama’ulu rushed to the park and picked up her sister’s
two children.
“I am glad to get them,” she said. “We thought it was a bomb
and a fire, at first.”
In the meantime, firefighters in protective gear and
air tanks searched the school to look for stragglers.
With a chemical
detector, they went back into the school to look for the source of the odor.
Finding nothing, they searched a ditch alongside the school.
They then
searched businesses behind Hanama’ulu Cafe, Moriguchi said, and discovered
Island Truss had used a wood treatment chemical early in the morning.
They
determined the amount of chemicals used wasn’t enough to cause students to
become ill, Moriguchi said.
Firefighters also ruled out Amfac’s spraying of
fields mauka of Lihu’e and in Wailua Falls as a possible cause of the
odor.
The spraying took place at 9:30 am. about four miles mauka of the
school, and any concentration of fumes probably would have been dissipated by
the time it got to the school, said Amfac official Lyle
Tabata.
Firefighters also ruled out spraying as the culprit because no
residents at Isenberg Tract or in surrounding areas complained of sudden
respiratory problems.
Acting on a public complaint, firefighters then
checked out odors that came from a county sewage treatment transfer station
in Kapaia, but after talking with the county sewage department engineer they
determined that the high concentration of hydrogen sulfide from the facility
was normal.
At the same time, the firefighters and police evacuated a
pre-school at the Lihu’e Hongwanji Mission church in Kapaia after a teacher
reported an eye irritation.
She, two other adults and at least 25 children
were then evacuated to the Kaua’i War Memorial Convention Hall.
In
response to the complaint, the Kaua’i police closed Kuhio Highway from Wilcox
Hospital and Kapaia Valley for 20 minutes, forcing traffic to be rerouted to
other parts of Lihu’e.
After moving command headquarters from the King
Kaumuali’i School to the parking lot of Wilcox Hospital, firefighters
continued a search of Hanama’ulu and Kapaia Valley and found the spill, a
75-yard long swath.
Mayor Maryanne Kusaka commended the professionalism of
the operation by the fire department, the police department and the health
department.
