By Hayes Hickman
Knoxville News-Sentinel
KNOX COUNTY, Tenn. — Knox County Health Department officials said they haven’t ruled out any possible causes yet of a mysterious outbreak that sent 40 students from West Valley Middle School to three area hospitals Friday after they fell ill during a field trip to a Civil War re-enactment in East Knox County.
The majority of the eighth-graders were released from the hospitals later in the afternoon and were recovering from symp-The scene at the Civil War
re-enactment
toms such as nausea, dizziness and a heavy feeling in their limbs, said Ranee Randby, spokeswoman for the health department. Two of the children were admitted to East Tennessee Children’s Hospital, although specifics weren’t available, she said.
“I wish we could say we’ve had a eureka moment, but we haven’t,” Randby said. “It’s just a matter of trying to eliminate possibilities.”
The children were among some 350 West Valley eighth-graders attending the event, which brought hundreds of other students from various Knox County schools to a site near Washington Pike and Circle Road for a re-enactment of the Battle of Fort Sanders.
Ambulances transported the students to Children’s Hospital, as well as St. Mary’s Medical Center and Parkwest Medical Center.
The mass illness appearedsimilar to an outbreak Tuesday among some 38 fifth-graders, as well as six adult supervisors, from Hardin Valley Elementary School who became sick during a multi day field trip to Camp Wesley Woods in Townsend.
Knox County Health Director Mark Jones said the earlier outbreak has since been diagnosed as the Nor-
walk virus, an intestinal illness that can be contracted through contaminated food and water.
Jones said, however, that investigators don’t yet see any indication of a connection between the earlier outbreak and Friday’s illnesses.
“We don’t know what it is,” said Jones, adding that his staff was deployed to the pasture, the school and the three hospitals to investigate. “We’re working on it.”
Rocky McClamroch, who was chaperoning his son’s fifth-grade class from Rocky Hill Elementary at the re-enactment, said he noticed one boy lying on the ground and thought the child might be suffering from heat exhaustion or dehydration. “But then there was another one on the ground. And then an ambulance showed up. And it just multiplied,” he said.
Before McClamoch knew it, three ambulances and Knoxville Volunteer Emergency Rescue Squad personnel were on the scene.
He also noticed that all of the children who fell ill were wearing the same blue Tshirts, which identifi edthem as West Valley students.
Those blue T-shirts are being tested by the health department, Randby said.
“We haven’t ruled out anything yet,” she said, although she added that the cause doesn’t appear to be food related.
Authorities were alerted at 11:07 a.m. that the children were ill, according to a Rural/Metro ambulance dispatcher. The children experienced nausea, vomiting, sweating and blurred vision, said Bill Kear, a spokesman for Rural/Metro.
Rural/Metro workers checked the carbon monoxide levels on the buses that brought the children to the re-enactment site at the foot of House Mountain, Kear said, although none of the buses showed unsafe levels of the gas.
Those children not sent to area hospitals were sent by buses back to West Valley Middle School, where a triage system was established in the gymnasium for nurses to examine the students, Kear said.