Users of GatorHub would have noticed an alert on March 28 offering relief and resolution to an alarming suspicion that had interrupted 9 a.m. classes in Oddfellows earlier that day. “Early Friday there was an alert of a gas leak at Oddfellows,” the notification read. “The gas company was called and met our HVAC team to investigate this. No gas leak was found.”
Mark Weindorf, director of Public Safety, explained that concerns were initially raised by parents of children attending the Meadville Childrens Center and Meadville Cooperative Preschool, both of which operate inside Oddfellows Hall.
“Parents dropping their children off, you know, at the daycare and at the preschool had noticed a smell that they believed to be a natural gas leak. I think it had been smelling for a few days. There was an odd smell, and we were not notified about that,” Weindorf said. “At that point, those parents, and some of them were board members to the daycare as well, had the daycare or had their building supervisor on scene actually call the gas company to get them started.”
When Public Safety was notified shortly after, the gas company was already racing towards campus. Weindorf described a swift response to the suspected danger, beginning with instructing Oddfellows Building Coordinator Jessica Sakal to carry out an evacuation.
“I quickly told her that I would have officers respond down, and if she could start with evacuation processes, if she could help me with that, because there was different faculty in the building,” Weindorf said.
Meanwhile, public safety officers rushed to the scene.
“Officer Goldenberg was there almost immediately, and myself and Assistant Director Kurt Sittler went down and responded down within, I’d say, four minutes, four or five minutes, you know, at the most, that we were there, and most of the evacuation was underway at that point,” Weindorf said. “We made sure everybody was out of the building. And by the time I got there, within that four or five minutes, the gas company was already onsite.”
An investigation commenced.
“Physical plant members and gas company members were going through, monitoring to see if there was an actual natural gas leak,” Weindorf said. “Ultimately, the building was cleared. There was no natural gas leak.”
Associate Professor of English and Department Chair Jennie Votava offered more details on the testing procedure by describing an email chain that included herself, Sakal, Weindorf and Physical Plant.
“No gas leak, he (Weindorf) said, was discovered by National Fuel, but they are going to pressure test the gas lines with the help of Physical Plant as a safety precaution,” Votava said. “So they went ahead and pressure tested the gas lines.”
Tests indicated that the building’s internal gas infrastructure was up to par.
“So by noon that day the gas testing was completed and everything was satisfactory,” Votava said. “The boilers are turned back on and the heat at that point, which had been turned off, was returned to the building.”
Weindorf emphasized the rapidity with which the investigation alleviated concerns of a gas leak.
“Really, the whole thing started at like 9:22 and the incident ended right at like 9:59,” Weindorf said.
“It would have ruined the 9 o’clock classes, unfortunately,” Ian Binnington, dean for the student experience, added.
Still, Weindorf said, Public Safety acted with caution.
“As soon as we arrived and immediately upon our arrival, there was never any evidence that we found, the gas company found, or anybody else found, that it was possibly a natural gas leak,” Weindorf said. “That would have been immediately identifiable, so no alert was sent out or anything like that. We continued to have the building evacuated because we wanted to be thorough and get all the way through it, but at that point we legitimately did not suspect that there was, there was any gas leak.”
The odor that had originally triggered distress was found to have a far less deadly, but more common origin: “I believe it ended up being a sewer issue,” Weindorf said. “And I think later that day, and I don’t have a record of it because it wasn’t reported to Public Safety, but toilets actually did back up, I think, in the daycare center. So that would be, I guess, the cause of that smell that was mistakenly thought to be natural gas at that point.”
Because of the speed with which a life-threatening emergency was ruled out, Weindorf, in consultation with Binnington, decided not to push out a campus-wide Omnilert.
“While there was reasonable suspicion at the beginning that there was something going on, it pretty quickly became apparent there wasn’t,” Binnington said. “And so alerting thousands of people across the world that we didn’t have an issue in Oddfellows — that sounds sarcastic. I don’t mean it to be, but, you know, letting thousands of people know that there’s actually nothing going on is not what the alert system is for.
“That would be more for a confirmed event,” Binnington said about an Omnilert. “If there’d been a gas leak, we would have, 100 percent.”
Binnington took the opportunity to stress how integral the Omnilert system is to campus emergency preparedness.
“Probably not when you were a first year, but certainly in the past couple of years, as part of orientation, we’ve asked first years as part of their orientation activities to put it on their phone,” Binnington said. “The advantage of Omnilert is it has links to campus resources embedded in it. It also has what’s essentially a panic button. Right? So there’s a big red button that’s at the top, and if you push that, you’ll get connected directly to public safety. You don’t even need to talk to them, and they will be able to respond to your location.”
Binnington reiterated how pleased he was with Weindorf’s performance under the stress of an emergency.
“I’ll say again how happy I am that Mark was willing to apply for our job to replace Jim Basinger.” Binnington said. “I thought replacing Jim would be hard, and it was. But we have hired an incredible replacement for Jim, somebody with over 30 years experience in law enforcement who has just hit the ground running and doing a fabulous job.”