LIHU’E — While making the short drive from Kukui Grove yesterday morning, Selena Camat feared terrible news could await her upon her arrival at Wilcox Hospital. A friend of hers who works at the hospital called her at the First
LIHU’E — While making the short drive from Kukui Grove yesterday morning,
Selena Camat feared terrible news could await her upon her arrival at Wilcox
Hospital.
A friend of hers who works at the hospital called her at the
First Hawaiian Bank in Kukui Grove to tell her that her 9-year-old daughter,
Jaezelle Balilea, was in the emergency room.
Balilea, a fourth-grader at
King Kaumuali’i Elementary School in Hanama’ulu, was a victim of fumes that
forced the evacuation of the school.
Camat said her daughter has allergies
and she feared poison might get into her daughter’s lungs and kill her.
“I
got really scared and couldn’t do my transactions,” she said after she received
the phone call. The bank staff knew of the evacuation from radio reports, and
Camat, a teller, recalled hoping one of those hospitalized wasn’t her
daughter.
Shaking with fear, she arrived safely at the hospital to another
unsettling situation.
Camat described the scene at the emergency room as
“panicky,” as parents arrived seeking information about their children. Camat
told The Garden Island that hospital workers were escorting parents to find
their children.
Parents whose children were being treated were taken to a
conference room, where cookies and punch were offered.
Camat wasn’t the
only worried parent with tears flowing, as they weren’t allowed into the rooms
where their children were being treated.
“It was OK. They were letting us
know what was going on,” she said of the hospital staff.
Tension returned
to the conference room frequently when more parents came in who hadn’t been
given information on the status of their children yet, she said.
“The
workers there were calm,” she said.
It was around 30 to 35 minutes between
the time she arrived at the hospital and when she was allowed to take her
daughter. “I was happy to see her,” Camat said.
Balilea was treated for
dizziness, nausea and irritated eyes, but was expected to return to school this
morning.
