Monday, August 20, 2007
Carbon monoxide leak: Nausea was the first sign of danger
Nausea was the first sign of danger.
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Photos by Gene Dalton | The Roanoke Times
Virginia Tech students retrieve some of their belongings Sunday from Collegiate Suites apartment building on Henry Lane. Residents are staying at hotels.
Collegiate Suites, the location of the carbon monoxide leak, is located on Henry Lane, just off of Main Street in Blacksburg.
BLACKSBURG -- The queasiness started about 10 a.m. Sunday for roommates Britnye Kurty and Rachael Evans.
"I was nauseous and lightheaded, I thought it was because I had just got out of a hot shower. It was very strange," said Kurty, a Virginia Tech junior from Rockville, Md. "We [Kurty, her roommate and their guests] were all drinking coffee talking about how odd we felt as we got ready to go" to the dedication of a memorial to the victims of the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech.
Kurty said she called her father, who was staying nearby, and asked Evans, her roommate, to call the apartment managers for the Collegiate Suites building at 1306 Henry Lane, as well as the Atmos Energy gas company.
When an unidentified gas company worker came to the apartments, Kurty said he told them that the leak wasn't coming from their third-floor apartment. Then he went to the unit below Kurty's and found five women unconscious.
Kurty said that was when she realized the situation was serious.
Kurty's father arrived, and Kurty said he and some others helped get the unconscious women -- she remembers five -- out of the apartment, down the stairs and onto the grass.
"As soon as the energy technician started screaming for help and the guys started pulling girls out," she said. "To see them just planted on the ground in such a serious state; it was hard to look at."
They weren't really moving at all," she said. "They were just lying there and they had vomited on themselves. It was hard to look at."
Kurty said she then went around banging on doors trying to alert other people in the building.
"After everything that happened here in the past, it's only natural now to be on top alert and to go to the furthest action you need to."
Eventually, she and Evans went to Montgomery Regional Hospital. Kurty said she was put on oxygen for about four hours and was released about 5 p.m. At 6:30 p.m., she was still wearing a red hospital ID bracelet.
"I'm still a little weak obviously," she said. "And just tired, exhausted."
Evans also spent four hours in the hospital Sunday.
"The headache that we got from it was unreal," she said. "I'm going to have a carbon monoxide detector for the rest of my life, I know that," she said.
She said Tech's Cook Counseling Center has sent e-mails to professors of students affected by the poisoning. But Evans plans on attending her classes today, the first day of fall semester, even though she'd be excused if she didn't. The junior from Suffolk said she is looking forward to the school year.
Kurty said that she was disappointed that she hadn't been able to go to the memorial dedication.
"I still think we are a very strong school and a very strong community. And again, this could happen anywhere."
Kurty said she would probably be staying at the Holiday Inn on Sunday night.
"I do plan on going back to class," she said. "I would love to go and start off on the right foot and not let any of this hold me back."
She plans to eventually return to her apartment, which she moved into only last week.
"I love this complex," she said. "As long as I know they've checked everything out to the best of their abilities, I have no problem staying here."
Carol Gordon and her daughter Kelly Gordon, a Tech junior, moved Kelly's things into her apartment late Saturday. Because of the clutter they decided not to spend the night there.
Carol Gordon of Fairfax had planned on straightening up the apartment Sunday. But as she approached the building Sunday morning, walking from a nearby grocery store, she saw several students lying on the ground with paramedics working on them, and ambulances nearby.
Even though Kelly Gordon's apartment is on the first floor of the building, opposite the second-floor apartment where the victims were found, Carol Gordon is now concerned for her daughter.
"Every apartment complex should have carbon monoxide detectors," she said. "Wherever she's going to live, she's not living anywhere without a carbon monoxide detector."
Gordon talked about buying detectors for other residents of the building. Less than an hour later, she was lugging a bag full of them to building 1306.
