All the Ignacio Junior High School students who were hospitalized Monday by noxious odors coming from a plugged sewer line returned to school and haven’t reported any ongoing health effects.
“I know there were some kids that have stayed home a day or so, but everybody (now) seems back to normal,” Camy Kinney, the district’s health services director, said Friday.
Some teachers, however, said they suspect the school’s sewage system has been malfunctioning for years and that it has caused long-term negative effects to their health.
The methane-gas leak from the plugged sewage line was reported Monday morning after students in an eighth-grade science class began experiencing symptoms of nausea, vomiting and headaches. The district called authorities and three fire departments responded. Ambulances and a school bus transported 30 students to Mercy Regional Medical Center and Animas Surgical Hospital. All students were treated, monitored and released from the hospital by 4 p.m. Monday, Ignacio Superintendent Rocco Fuschetto said.
The district received compliments from staff members at Mercy for how well district staff members dealt with the emergency.
In an interview Thursday, eighth-grade science teacher Joseph Duffy, who teaches in the classroom where the blocked sewage line was discovered, said all of his students seem like they are doing “just fine.”
The school brought in a plumber on Monday to unclog the blocked sewage lines beneath the school, Fuschetto said.
Everything is now “back to normal,” he said.
An insurance agent also visited the school because the district’s insurance will cover all of the students’ medical bills, Fuschetto said.
District officials estimated that the junior high’s plumbing system was built around 1998.
The area where the science classroom is located is set to be remodeled as part of an $50 million makeover of all of Ignacio’s schools. The district has not decided whether the remodel will include redoing the school’s plumbing, Fuschetto said.
Some teachers within the district say the junior high’s plumbing system is faulty and has been that way for years. They say fumes coming from the sewage lines combined with poor ventilation are the likely cause of a raft of health issues they have been experiencing including coughing, eye irritation, headaches, memory issues, nausea and other cold and flu-like symptoms.
Some days are worse than others, but the teachers said their symptoms decrease or disappear during the summer when they aren’t in school. Teachers originally thought their symptoms were a result of stress, but they have started to suspect the sewage smell. Monday’s incident renewed their concerns.
Students have to be taken out of the science classroom at least once a year because of the fumes, one teacher said. Another said she has had to open her classroom windows in the winter because of the stench.
The San Juan Basin Health Department has not visited the junior high building since Monday’s gas leak, said Greg Brand, environmental health director. Brand said he has requested information from the school district about its response and future plans. The department has no plans to do further testing at this point, he said.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has guidelines on individual sewage-disposal systems that school districts are supposed to follow. The health department would work with the school district on any kind of assessment of its system, Brand said.
ecowan@durangoherald.com
