A carbon monoxide scare forced officials to partially evacuate Mohawk Hall Wednesday night, after a suite of girls reported feeling dizzy, nauseated and light-headed.
But after checking the whole building, authorities could find no carbon monoxide in suite 2E, nor anywhere else in the College-in-the-Woods dormitory, said Chuck Paffie, assistant chief of the Vestal Volunteer Fire Department.
Paffie said that normal air carbon monoxide concentrations range from zero to one percent.
“We checked on all floors,” Paffie said, “and there’s absolutely nothing,”
Not all Mohawk residents were evacuated, but those who did choose to leave the building were not allowed to return until officials gave the all-clear. Police had bystanders wait at the edge of the Mohawk parking lot, “in case there’s a fire or explosion.”
Ali Onar Ahat, a sophomore information systems engineering major, was asked to leave his first-floor room by the residential director at around 8 p.m. He and his two friends stood in the parking lot, watching the evacuation inside.
“This isn’t good,” he said.
Paffie said that although Mohawk is relatively new, any building with a boiler, furnace, hot water heater or other device that burns fossil fuels could potentially become the site of a carbon monoxide leak.
“We erred on the safe side,” he said. “In this case, we did the right thing.”
Some Mohawk residents, including Ahat, thought that the girls’ illness had been caused by a repainting project on the building’s third floor. But Paffie discounted it, saying the smell of the paint was “really light” and too weak to do any harm.
He also said that the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning are similar to those associated with the flu, and that it’s possible that since the girls live together, they all contracted the same bug.
But pre-med student Kaitlin DiPietro, of Mohawk 2E, said that the trouble started Tuesday at around 6 p.m. when two of the girls began to get headaches, throat aches and fatigue.
The girls — all are BU cross-country runners, and all but one are freshmen — then went to a fundraiser, where they spent two hours. They returned to the suite, and all but one began to feel ill. By morning the symptoms had not abated.
By dinner that day, 2E resident Elizabeth Sweeney had grown concerned enough to call her mother, who told her that it could be carbon monoxide poisoning and that they should get it checked out.
The girls then told a resident assistant, who said he’d tell the resident director. But after a while, nothing had come of their complaint, so they told another RA, Peter Eraca, a political science grad student.
“Two seconds later, they’re all knocking on our door,” said 2E freshman Kate Reilly.
The ensuing response was indeed quick, and massive: by the end of the ordeal, campus ambulance Harpur’s Ferry, the University police and the Vestal fire department — complete with a fire engine and supporting vehicles — had responded to the scene.
“They made us get our things together and evacuate,” Reilly said. “Then a whole bunch more people came.”
The Vestal fire department arrived shortly after.
“They all came in with the sniffer,” DiPietro said, referring to the portable carbon monoxide sensor that ultimately detected no trace of the gas.
The girls were whisked to one of the ambulances waiting in front of the building, where they were briefly examined — but all refused to be taken to the hospital.
Why would they refuse medical treatment, even after having triggered a building-wide evacuation?
“Calc test at 9 a.m.,” Sweeney said.