Students sickened by heater leak
A carbon monoxide leak sent three youths from Anaconda, Mont., to a Spokane hospital on Friday.
The three were sleeping in their dormitory at the Anaconda Job Corps Center on Friday morning when they woke with headaches, nausea and fatigue. Two lost consciousness. A cracked exhaust pipe in a dormitory heater sickened about 30 students, at least 20 of them seriously.
Three of the more seriously ill students wound up at Deaconess Medical Center’s Hyperbaric and Wound Center. In the three pressurized hyperbaric chambers, the men breathed pure oxygen for two hours Friday afternoon, gradually expelling the carbon monoxide from their bloodstreams.
Seventeen other students were flown to hospitals in Seattle, Billings and elsewhere, for the same treatment given those flown to Spokane.
All three of the young men – David Umland of Anaconda, Jeff Pacheco of Denver, and James Hulstine of Kemmerer, Wyo. – were in good condition Friday night after their treatment. The three were to stay at Deaconess Friday night before heading back to Anaconda by bus this morning.
Pacheco said he woke up Friday around 4 a.m. feeling nauseous, extremely tired and with “a really bad headache.”
“I thought it might have been that I just wasn’t feeling well,” said Pacheco, who is studying business education at the training center.
But then he vomited and passed out. Afterward, he took a shower, but passed out again and woke up on the floor before being evacuated.
“It started out kind of chaotic because nobody knew what was going on,” he said. “But once they did, they handled it really well.”
He said he started feeling better shortly after entering the hyperbaric chamber, but his roommate at the training center wasn’t so lucky. Umland’s ears didn’t adjust well to the pressure in the chamber, so doctors had to poke small holes in his eardrums to balance out the pressure. It will take about 10 days for his eardrums to heal.
“It sucks,” said Umland, who is studying to be a carpenter at the training center. “Not many people can say they got their eardrums poked.”
The job center trains 224 male and female students ages 16 to 24 in such areas as painting, culinary arts, welding and bricklaying.
A cracked PVC pipe sent the colorless and odorless gas into the dormitory. It was unclear when the leak began.
Carbon monoxide poisoning can lead to sore muscles and joints, confusion, tingling in the fingers and face, seizures and even death. About three-quarters of the 30 to 40 emergency hyperbaric treatments at Deaconess each year stem from carbon monoxide poisoning, said Janice Marich, Deaconess spokeswoman.
The high pressure helps to efficiently deliver oxygen to damaged tissues and to create new blood vessels.
“I feel like a million bucks,” Pacheco said as he finished up his treatment.