CEDAR CITY, Utah — A middle school in Cedar City is pausing in-person learning and pivoting to online classes for two days this week after carbon monoxide was detected inside and several people fell sick.
The Iron County School District announced Sunday that Canyon View Middle School will hold classes remotely on Monday and Tuesday while an independent party comes in to test the school's carbon monoxide (CO) detectors.
The school was evacuated Thursday around 1 p.m. after some students and teachers in one area of the school reported having headaches and feeling dizzy and nauseous. A carbon monoxide (CO) alarm went off in "D Hall," according to the Iron County School District.
Two dozen were affected initially, but the district believes twice as many sought treatment over the weekend.
Rachelle Johnson's two daughters who attend Canyon View both showed symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning. One of them was in the hall where the alarm went off.
Johnson said they spent the night in a hyperbaric chamber, which is a therapy method using pure oxygen in a pressurized environment.
Both of the girls are doing much better now, but Johnson still has unanswered questions.
"We’re just concerned for our kids and worried about sending them back... It makes me nervous," she said. "I don’t want to send them back until we know what’s going on. It’s not worth the risk."
The district said in an announcement Sunday that the Cedar City Fire Department performed tests within about 15 minutes of the alarm going off, and they found "small amounts" of the toxic gas. However, by the time first responders arrived, the school had already opened all doors and windows, so the exact levels at the time of the incident were not recorded.
Students in that area of the school were tested, and their levels were found to be normal. Students were then cleared to re-enter the building.
The district says the fire department returned Friday morning to conduct more tests throughout the school, and they found no dangerous CO levels.
The fire department and Dominion Energy then tested the building later that afternoon due to a "possible exposure," but they deemed it safe. Then on Saturday, more tests were performed after reports of possible exposures at basketball games, but again no dangerous levels of CO were detected.
Taking it one step further, the district called in the help of the Utah National Guard 85th Civil Support Team, which has equipment to test for CO at the "parts per billion level" instead of "parts per million."
The district says there were no traces of harmful gasses after about four hours of testing. The Guard's equipment can reportedly detect more than 150,000 potentially harmful particulates.
“We are going above and beyond what would normally be expected in this situation to ensure that students and staff are safe in our school,” District Superintendent Lance Hatch said in Sunday's press release.
The district says there are CO detectors in every classroom, hallway and public area of the school, and the testing of these detectors will be conducted Tuesday morning.
Rebecca Rave has twin sons in 7th grade who haven’t been to class since this happened.
"I don’t feel like it’s safe," Rave said.
District spokeswoman Shauna Lund said they’ve gone through everything and believe construction work on a remodel project inside the school may have been the cause. Now, she says, that type of work will no longer be allowed during school hours.
"They are still doing an investigation into what protocols maybe failed or if it was just an atmospheric change that pulled those gases into the building," Lund said.
Maurice Young’s 8th-grade son had to have breathing treatments after exposure to carbon monoxide in class.
"My concern is with how it was originally handled," Young said. "Accidents happen, incidents happen, but initially, it seems like it was really mishandled."
"As soon as they knew immediately the severity of it, the school should have been closed down and the parents informed," he continued. "To their credit, we were all informed by text message by email, it’s not like we were just completely caught off guard."
Young says he's not sure if he'll be sending his son back to class.
"At this moment we’re pretty trepidatious, to be honest," he said. "We’ll see."
Still, he expressed thanks to everyone who tried to help with a situation he says he knows could have been worse.
"To all those that did participate to evacuate and tend to the kids, a lot were hospitalized and gave them breathing treatments. To everybody that was a part of that, thank you very much," Young said.
