5 July 2007
Report on Birck Nanotechnology Center Incident and Evacuation 4 July 2007
At approximately 10:45 AM on Wednesday, 4 July 2007 - a Purdue holiday - two
people from the Purdue University Fire Department responded to a "trouble"
alarm on the BNC fire panel. Note that a trouble alarm does not indicate a
fire incident, but indicates that there is a problem in the fire alarm
system that may leave us without alarm capability.
On responding, both individuals smelled a faint, sweet smell in the area of
the alarm panel. After working on the system for approximately 8 minutes,
the panel was deactivated and the two individuals began to leave the area.
One of the responders began coughing and vomited on exiting the building.
He was taken by ambulance to St. Elizabeth Medical Center where it was
determined that he had an asthma attack. The trigger for the asthma attack
has not been indicated.
Dave Lubelski, Process and Equipment Manager, was called by Purdue Police,
and asked to come to the building. He arrived at approximately 11:25 AM and
conferred with Steve Jurss, Safety Manager, by telephone. An R-134A
refrigerant leak was suspected because of the location of the smell. A Fire
Department-supplied portable detector gave an indication of refrigerant
outside of rooms 1100 and 1127. As a result, the building was evacuated due
to a suspected refrigerant leak and the lack of fire alarm capability.
Subsequent analysis led to the conclusion that there was no leak. Work with
the detector indicated that it was not reliable for this purpose, as it
responds to high airflows, hot oil aerosol around pumps, and other
phenomenon. Mark Voorhis, Building Manager, interrogated all the
fixed-refrigerant sensors and they indicated that no leaks were - or had
been - present. He also determined that all chiller systems were working
properly, indicating that there had been no loss of refrigerant. BNC-owned
detectors - a 4-gas explosive-gas sensor and a hydrogen-gas sensor - also
gave no indication of gases being present.
Some time shortly after 1:00 PM Fire Equipment Services arrived and
determined the cause of the system failure (trouble alarm). They could not,
however, bring the system to functionality with the trouble alarm still
active. This problem required that the fire-alarm system be left in an
inactive mode, meaning that there was no alarm capability in the building.
BNC leadership decided that it was necessary to keep the building closed
until the fire alarm could be reactivated. Fire Equipment Services
indicated that they believed they could have all systems operational by
12:00 noon on July 5, 2007. This was communicated to the BNC community via
e-mail.
At approximately 6:30 PM Fire Equipment Services repaired the trouble alarm
and brought the fire alarm system back to a fully functional condition. At
that point there were two options: 1) bring back the people who had already
given up their holiday to mitigate the emergency and have them open the
building effective 7:30-8:00 PM, or 2) leave the building closed for the
evening and reopen at 7:30 AM on Thursday. The decision was made to reopen
Thursday morning.
The BNC facility re-opened at 7:30 AM on Thursday. All warning signs were
removed and building functions were resumed.
John Weaver
Facility Manager
