By Shawna Morrison , Greg Esposito and Angela Manese-Lee
Roanoke Times
Copyright 2007 The Roanoke Times
BLACKSBURG, Va. — Less than an hour before Virginia Tech dedicated a memorial to 32 students and faculty members killed by a gunman April 16, Blacksburg was jolted by another incident Sunday when 23 people, many of them students, were sickened in a carbon monoxide leak at an off-campus apartment building.
Five women were still hospitalized Sunday night, and their Collegiate Suites apartment building at 1306 Henry Lane remained cordoned off after tests showed potentially lethal levels of the gas in their building. Authorities believe the leak was caused by a hot-water heater.
“At first when they were banging on the doors and yelling to get out, my first thought was that there was another shooting,” said Jessica Foster, a Tech sophomore from Williamsburg who lives on the third floor. “It was just a gut feeling.”
At the time they were evacuated shortly after 11 a.m., Foster and her roommate, Nadia Benkhadra, a sophomore from Olney, Md., were getting ready to go to the noon memorial dedication.
“It’s just unfortunate, and it’s a bad coincidence,” Rachael Evans, a Tech junior from Suffolk said of the multiple tragedies involving the university the past year. “We just thought, going into this year, that this was going to be a better year, and then this happened. But it still will be.”
The five women who remained hospitalized Sunday night were found unresponsive in their beds in apartment F Sunday morning by a gas company employee. Police identified the women as Elizabeth Amanda Burgin of Ashburn, Carolyn Ann Dorman of Potomac, Md., Nichole Marie Howarth of Chesterfield, Kristin Louise Julia of Waterford and Kirsten Wendie Halik of Vienna, Va. All are 19-year-old Tech students.
A resident of the building had gotten sick and, suspecting a natural-gas leak, called Atmos Energy, Blacksburg police Capt. Bruce Bradbery said. The unidentified employee was let in by a maintenance worker and discovered that the problem was with carbon monoxide, not natural gas.
The employee carried the five women onto a landing for air, then called police. Others helped him carry the women outside onto the lawn, Bradbery said.
Julia and Halik were unable to breathe on their own, Bradbery said. They were placed on ventilators and flown to the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville for treatment.
They were in critical condition Sunday night.
Tommy Julia said late Sunday evening his sister’s condition was “still 50/50.”
Howarth and Dorman were able to breathe on their own but were unresponsive, Bradbery said. They and Burgin were taken to Duke University Medical Center for treatment. Burgin’s condition improved as the day wore on, Bradbery said.
They were in stable condition Sunday night.
Kristin Carr, a Tech sophomore from Northern Virginia, lives with three roommates in a first-floor apartment in building 1306. This is her first year living at Collegiate Suites, which is popular with Tech students -- particularly with female students because it’s fairly new and has walk-in closets, she said.
Carr, who moved into the building Friday, said she didn’t notice anything unusual until about 11 a.m. Sunday.
“It was just crazy,” she said. “We were sitting in the apartment watching TV after breakfast and we heard people banging on doors.
“Someone banged on our door, and we heard someone yelling, “There’s a gas leak, get out,’ ” she said.
As she walked out, Carr said she saw several women passed out on a second-floor landing.
Her boyfriend, Brett Hutcherson, a Tech junior from Lynchburg, said he is certified in cardiopulmonary resuscitation and helped the women.
“We came around the side of the building, and it didn’t look like there were enough paramedics at that time,” Hutcherson said. “I went over to see what I could do.”
He said several women were lying on their backs, with pulses but unresponsive.
“I rolled them over on their sides to open up their airways,” Hutcherson said. He also checked vital signs and stayed with the women until all of them had been loaded into ambulances.
“I just wanted to make sure everyone was OK, because this university has been through a lot,” he said.
Bradbery said 21 people, including the five women, were taken to Montgomery Regional Hospital in Blacksburg. Sixteen were treated and released.
Two people were treated at Carilion New River Valley Medical Center in Montgomery County and released by Sunday evening, a hospital spokesman said.
Two others reported being sick but weren’t taken to a hospital, Bradbery said.
Blacksburg Assistant Fire Chief Anthony Wilson said the source of the leak appears to have been a faulty valve on a hot-water heater in the women’s laundry room. The relief valve was stuck open, he said, forcing the appliance to constantly burn fuel in an attempt to heat the water.
One person was killed and dozens more sickened at Roanoke College in July 2006 when a water heater caused a carbon monoxide leak there.
Three teams of firefighters were sent in to check carbon monoxide levels in all 12 apartments in the Collegiate Suites building on Sunday, Wilson said. Four apartments -- all on the second and third floors and confined to one side of the building -- had high levels, he said.
Half an hour after police were first called about the leak at 11:18 a.m., carbon monoxide levels within the apartment shared by the five women were at 500 parts per million parts of air, Wilson said. He called that amount “a potentially lethal dose.”
He said people can experience symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning at levels as low as 25 parts per million.
The apartment building remained closed late Sunday, and residents were being housed at hotels. Wilson said officials would work today to try to confirm that the water heater was the source of the leak.
Staff writers Anna Mallory, Tim Thornton and Donna Alvis-Banks contributed to this report.