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