HANAMA’ULU —By the time the air had cleared Tuesday afternoon and King Kaumuali’i Elementary School principal Maggy Cox was reasonably sure her 850 students were safe, she took time to review the events that led to that morning’s evacuation. “Now
HANAMA’ULU —By the time the air had cleared Tuesday afternoon and King
Kaumuali’i Elementary School principal Maggy Cox was reasonably sure her 850
students were safe, she took time to review the events that led to that
morning’s evacuation.
“Now we have an evacuation plan … and it worked
pretty well,” she said. “To me it was a good feeling that when we needed the
support, everyone was there to help us.”
The Hanama’ulu elementary school
was evacuated when fumes from a herbicide dumped near the school caused
students to become ill.
Cox said she was first alerted at about 9:30 a.m.
when she got a call from a teacher in one her classrooms. “Maggy can you come
and check, there is some funny smell and our eyes are kinna burning,” the
caller said.
“The odor was obvious as soon as I left the administration
office,” she said. “I went running out and called for custodians, and we
covered the campus to see what it was and where it was coming from. Nothing was
obvious, no cane was burning.
“As I was running around I had this real
funny taste in my mouth. Some of the kids eyes were burning. A few said their
chests were hurting and the smell was strong,” Cox said.
With recess
coming up, Cox said she instructed all teachers to keep the students in class
and shut the doors and windows. “We had a PE class in the yard and they were
called in,” she said.
The principal said she had no idea where the smell
was coming from. “I called the Lihue Plantation (LP) right away because we had
Kona winds, and they were my first thought.”
She was told that most
everyone at LP was on furlough, but someone would check with the workers. “Lyle
from LP returned a call within minutes and said LP was not spraying
anywhere.”
One of the school custodians, who used to work for the
plantation, suggested that the toxic odor might be coming from the water in the
drainage ditch that runs alongside the school. He recalled that the plantation
would spray the water for mosquitos, Cox said.
“We just thought that it
had to be from the area of the plantation because of the winds,” she said. “So
I called LP back and asked them to shut it (the water flow) down. “LP
said OK, but called me back within minutes.
“We are not doing that today
(spraying), we are not doing anything that would have caused this” was the
message from Lihue Plantation, Cox said.
At the same time as I was on the
phone with LP our Health Aid was on the line with Poison Control, said Cox.
Because of the symptoms the students were having Cox was advised to
evacuate the school.
“My first question was evacuate 850 students to where?
We can’t go into the school yard. So I called 911.”
That call was placed at
10:03 a.m. Cox said that within minutes the HAZMAT team arrived at the school.
The decision was made to walk the students to the neighboring park off
campus and away from the school. The Kaua’i Fire Department, the police
department and emergency medical technicians set up the area.
“The safety
of the students was my primary concern,” Cox said. “That 850 students, some of
them very young and some with special needs might be scared and distressed and
of course the process of reunion with the parents was yet to unfold.”
She
instructed the teachers to take attendance books and walk as a class to the
evacuation site. “The kids were holding their noses and hiding their faces
because of the smell.” she said.
Paramedics took the students that were
symptomatic and they were transported to Wilcox Hospital.
Vice Principal
Fred Rose was there to ensure that the children were safe and followed them
through the treatment to release process.
About 52 students were treated at
the hospital.
The other 800 were bused to the convention center. The King
K cafeteria staff had the school lunches packed and delivered and served the
students.
As this was going on the HAZMAT teams checked out the school and
continued to try to identify the source of the odor.
Reuniting the students
with parents was a process that went slower than Cox would have liked but it
had to be done in a very organized way so school officials could account for
each child.
The KPD assisted in the process of releasing the students as
the parents arrived and there were no complaints.
“Actually, I had many
parents who thanked me for evacuating their children. That surprised me because
I’m sure it was difficult for them,” Cox said.
