Gas Leak Sickens 19 Va. Tech Students

By SUE LINDSEY

BLACKSBURG, Va. – A carbon monoxide leak at an off-campus apartment complex critically sickened two Virginia Tech students and sent 17 other people to hospitals Sunday, police said.

Five women, all students, were found unconscious in their beds in a unit at the Collegiate Suites complex, Capt. Bruce Bradbery said.

Two were taken to the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville, where they were in critical condition, he said. Their three roommates were taken to Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C.

Two of the women taken to Duke could breathe on their own but remained unresponsive, Bradbery said; another he described as semiconscious. All three were in serious condition, authorities said.

Fourteen more people were treated at hospitals and released, and a handful of others were treated on the scene, officials said.

A resident of a nearby apartment had gotten sick and called the gas company, thinking there was a gas leak, Bradbery said. The employee realized it wasn’t a gas leak and called police shortly after 11 a.m.

The gas company employee and a maintenance worker found the five women and pulled them onto a second-story breezeway.

Kristin Carr, a sophomore, said she and her three roommates left their ground-floor apartment after someone banged on the door to warn them. She saw women lying unconscious on the second-floor landing of the three-story, 12-apartment complex.

"That was definitely scary," she said.

Carr’s boyfriend, Brett Hutcherson, a pre-med student, said there were not enough paramedics to care for everyone at first, so he helped check victims’ vital signs and rolled the sick onto their sides to enable them to breathe more easily.

Bradbery said the cause of the leak appeared to be a faulty valve on the water heater in the women’s four-bedroom apartment.

A phone listing for the complex on its Web site rang unanswered.

Readings taken by the Blacksburg Fire Department before noon showed carbon monoxide levels of 500 parts per million in the apartment shared by the five women, Bradbery said. People experience symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning at levels as low as 25 parts per million, he said.

Residents were being housed in a hotel overnight, Carr said.

The leak came the day Virginia Tech dedicated a memorial to the 32 people killed by a student gunman in April. Fall semester classes begin Monday.

Bradbery said he was at the dedication ceremony when he got the call about the injuries.

"Enough’s enough," Bradbery said. "We’ve got four kids here who are just clinging to life."