Inspector locates school stench

The case of the mysterious stench at a Sandpoint school appears to have been solved.

An inspector with the state department of public works blames the dirt-floor utility tunnels under a portion of Farmin-Stidwell Elementary School for the musty, moldy smell that has permeated the school since early November.

Air pressure in that crawl space is pushing the smell of mold spores into the building, causing the stench to waft through the halls and explaining reports of the odor appearing to move around the building’s east wing.

School officials had suspected from the start that the crawl space was the culprit, said Dick Cvitanich, superintendent of the Lake Pend Oreille School District.

A report from Elaine Hill, school safety project manager for the state public works department, says the 600-student school is safe to occupy but that steps need to be taken as soon as possible to stop the smell.

Hill’s report calls for janitors to examine the school’s ventilation system for defects and to hire a professional engineer to evaluate the system for ways to change the air flow. Four exhaust fans are to be installed in the utility tunnels to keep the air in the crawl space rather than flowing through floor cracks and openings into the building. Classroom doors are to remain closed. The district plans to have the fans in place by the time school resumes in January.

Hill’s visit was prompted by a Sandpoint doctor who contacted the state public works department about the number of teachers he was seeing from the school with symptoms they blamed on the stench.

Sandpoint resident Mike Conner encouraged his wife, Wendy, a first-grade teacher, to come forward after she experienced dizziness, memory loss and other symptoms on consecutive days. She said she’s missed about eight days of school since the odor started.

The Conners spoke to the school board about their concerns at the Dec. 12 meeting and distributed a petition signed by about 20 teachers, who listed symptoms including itchy eyes, memory loss and dizziness.

“Something in the school has made these staff members sick,” Mike Conner said Thursday. Most are reluctant to speak out, he said, because “they’re all afraid they’re going to lose their jobs.”

Students have reported symptoms, too, but not in the numbers staff members have.

Cvitanich has said teachers who miss school because of symptoms from the smell likely won’t have to use sick days.

Hill visited the school two weeks ago with Harry Beaulieu, president and senior scientist with Industrial Hygiene Resources in Boise; and David Moore, of L&S Engineering in Spokane. Accompanied by Jeff Lambert, of Enviroscience, an environmental engineer hired by the school district, they spent about seven hours examining the school, looking in the utility tunnels and conducting air quality tests. They determined the school was safe for occupancy that day.

Although mold is present throughout the school, it won’t pose any harm if the spore-filled air is kept beneath the school in the utility tunnels, Beaulieu said.

“This does not warrant a full-scale mold abatement across the whole crawl space,” he said.

The investigation began about seven weeks ago when a teacher complained of a musty smell in her classroom. Janitors inspected the room and, finding nothing, entered the dirt-floor utility tunnels beneath the school building, where they discovered a black mold under the classroom. An abatement contractor treated the mold with a disinfectant Nov. 11 and 12. Teachers working in the building Nov. 12, a Sunday, complained of the smell that day.

Janitors repaired a leaky water heater and replaced nearby floor tiles and wall boards. Multiple air quality tests over the next few weeks showed nothing unusual, but teachers continued to complain of symptoms. The smell would even move throughout the building, though it concentrated mostly on the east end.

The school was built in two parts in the 1960s. The east end, Farmin, served as an elementary school, while the west end, Stidwell, was the junior high school. The buildings were connected by a commons area a few years later.

Farmin had the utility tunnels, while Stidwell did not. That explains why school staff on the west end of the building didn’t experience the symptoms that many east side teachers reported, officials said.