A glitch in the system caused an ammonia scare at Pitt Meadows Arena, Sunday.
The incident happened at about 9:30 p..m. when alarms in the arena went off. A check by the Pitt Meadows fire department revealed that although an indicator in the system said it was an ammonia leak, none of the alarms where the ammonia is kept had gone off.
“We came and checked it out and confirmed – there was no ammonia leak and left the scene,” said assist. fire chief Brad Perrie.
“If there is an ammonia leak, there is a separate ammonia alarm that would signal to the panel. But there would be more lights flashing, more alarms going off where the ammonia is kept,” he said.
However, not everyone evacuated the arena.
“It’s like anything, people don’t listen to alarms,” Perrie continued.
“You go to an apartment building on fire, the alarms are ringing and people are still standing on their balconies. It’s a typical thing. People become complacent with alarms so they don’t really pay attention,” he said.
Once it was confirmed that it was a false alarm the equipment was retested and recalibrated and within 15 minutes people were allowed to re-enter the building.
General manager of the Pitt Meadows Arena Dave Fossum was happy with the response to the alarm. He said given the time frames of the incident and in reviewing it with the chief engineer and the engineer on shift that everything went according to plan.
“The alarm went, start the evacuation, do the quick check. It was all within the realm of the way we expect it to happen,” said Fossum.
“Had it been an actual high-level alarm then it would have gone into a higher rate of speed for evacuating,” he said.
All of the procedures and mechanisms in place at the arena have been approved by the B.C. Safety Authority or Technical Safety Authority, as it is called now.
Once the alarms go off in the arenas, the Pitt Meadows fire department is alerted immediately.
Then the operations manager is called, the facility’s cell is called, Fossum is called, the refrigeration service company that we deal with also gets a series of texts and e-mails.
“If an actual ammonia alarm happens there’s a lot of redundancy in how the system works,” explained Fossum, adding that the actual ammonia in the facility is located in an air-tight room with sensors. The monitoring for those sensors is actually removed from that room where staff can go and check for levels and readings.
“It would take a lot for the ammonia to actually escape the plant room and get out to the public,” he said.
Also, the plant room has huge ventilation fans that would “take an ammonia leak up into the sky.”
Any person who works in the rink has to take more than 80 hours of courses plus apprentice for six months to a year, before they are even qualified to write an exam.
The ammonia sensors and alarms are given an annual inspection by the technicians, which was done only recently.
“But we check them monthly, we have a system for checking them and callibrating them,” said Fossum.
Nevertheless, Perrie warns that people should evacuate buildings, whether they be an apartment buildings or commercial buildings, before they are told that there is a higher threat possibly.
“Ammonia afixiates you, makes your lungs not process oxygen. You basically can’t breathe, you suffocate,” he said noting that fire alarms are tested annually at the arena and ammonia detectors more often by special engineers.
The fire department treats an ammonia leak like any gas leak. They evacuate the area, make sure people are safe and wait for an engineer to go in to fix the problem.
Three people died following an ammonia leak at an arena in Fernie, in southeastern B.C., on Oct. 17.
Fossum says that event was different than what happened in this incidence. The workers in Fernie were in the process of fixing a leak.
“They were workers going in to repair an incident that was going on as opposed to discovering a leak and evacuating the building,” said Fossum.