FEBRUARY 24, 2015
EAST LANSING, MI (WLNS)
Employees were working with a chemical they’ve used before
inside a building that is part of MSU’s F-RIB facility.
“It’s standard procedure within the operation of the
facility, so nothing special that they did or didn’t try out,” said Georg
Bollen, Experimental Systems Divisions, director, F-RIB.
F-RIB’s experimental systems director says something went
wrong when employees tried to neutralize or throw away a chemical. A strong
odor soon emerged.
“I don’t think we really know what happened.”
What did happen though soon after the odor developed, was an
alarm went off, alerting the 10 employees inside to quickly exit the building.
One was taken the hospital as a precaution.
University police and East Lansing fire were called in to
keep people at a distance, even making sure 6 News didn’t get too close as the
odor spread outside.
“This is what we practice for, we have the chemistry
building on campus, we’ve had responses to the chemistry building, so this is nothing
out of the ordinary,” said Sgt. Florene McGlothian-Taylor, Michigan State
Police.
Both Michigan State Police as well as the Experimental
Systems director at F-RIB say this is an example of following proper procedure,
in case something goes wrong to immediately exit the building.
“Once the alarm went off the employees evacuated the
building as they should.”
“For whatever reason things can sometimes go wrong and we
don’t know exactly always what the reason is, but the important thing is when
someone notices something wrong that they reacted in the right way.”
That’s exactly what happened. Everyone managed to get out
safely, leaving environmental and health crews now to figure out how it all
happened in the first place.
The Experimental Systems director says they’ll be looking at
changing procedures for throwing away chemicals in the facility if they need
to, following the investigation’s outcome.