At approx. 10:45 am yesterday, Tuesday, March 14, Jeff Elwell, a Facilities Division employee at our Community Center, heard an odd noise coming from the refrigeration room at the Community Center. When he entered the room to investigate he immediately recognized the noise as a Freon leak, and the leak was louder than the refrigerant alarm going off in the room.Â
Jeff knew this was an emergency. Freon is a poisonous gas. It is not to be messed with. He quickly shut off several valves and left the room proceeded to organize a quick, but orderly evacuation of the building. Other Community Center staffmembers quickly moved throughout the building evacuating customers and staff, and securing perimeter doors so no one could enter the building.  Jeff shut off the boilers, water heaters and anything with an open flame, and grabbed floor plans and MSDS sheets as he headed out of the building himself.Â
As they were evacuating the building, our staff called 911 Dispatch, which is standard protocol for a Freon leak. They also called a professional refrigeration contractor to seek assistance with fixing the problem.Â
Fire and Police responded and secured the perimeter of the building. With the help of refrigeration contractor’s staff, and wearing self contained breathing apparatus and masks, Fire Department staff closed additional valves on the refrigeration system to stop all Freon from leaking. They began opening exterior doors to ventilate the building and changed the building’s ventilation systems to a “pressurize and exhaust†mode, in order to ventilate the building more quickly. By about 12:15 pm, the contractor and our Facilities Division staff were able to enter the refrigeration room and evaluate the cause of the leak.Â
The problem: A valve stem in a solenoid valve on the low pressure side of the refrigeration system had shattered, allowing the Freon to leak out. The refrigeration contractor made the repair, and will replace all similar valves.  We routinely replace these valves every two years, as the constant movement of the valve tends to wear it out quickly. We are considering replacing them annually, from this point forward.Â
Post-incident: Our staff called the EPA to report the leak and prepared an incident report for later review by our Safety Committee. We recalled our Community Center staff from City Hall, and the building reopened yesterday around 1:00 pm.
Our Fire Marshall, Mr. Allen Nelson, was very complimentary about the way the staff handled the situation. He said they evacuated the building quickly and seemed to do everything right. He said it is rare that building staff meets Fire Fighters in front of their building with 8 ½ X 11 laminated floor plans of the building and MSDS sheets.
I’m proud of the way our Community Center staff handled this situation yesterday.  They recognized a dangerous situation and responded appropriately, just as they are trained to do. They reacted quickly and prevented harm to any of our customers, and to fellow employees. They quickly diagnosed the situation and followed-up with the right authorities as quickly as possible.Â
It’s good to have good staff.Â