Student questions gas leak timeline, evacuation

Brent Rose
Managing Editor

York student Dianne Dell’Angelo said she smelled gas both inside and outside the Chemistry Building hours before the Life Sciences Building was evacuated due to a gas leak Nov. 9.
“Walking towards the [Chemistry Building (CB)], you could smell a gas smell,” said Dell’Angelo, a fourth-year psychology major, who had an 8:30 a.m. class there.
“We went into class and shortly after sitting in class I had a headache and I was kind of feeling sick, but I didn’t think it was because of the smell of the gas.”
Alex Bilyk, York’s director of media relations, said the smell before the gas leak at 2:30 p.m. could have been due to construction, possibly asphalt on the roof of the Life Sciences Building (LSB), but not gas.
He said this is not the first time people noticed a smell around LSB and that the smell was not gas.
Bilyk added York investigated the smell with help from an oc- cupational health and safety investigator, who did not detect natural gas with his monitoring equipment.
Dell’Angelo, however, said she and several classmates started to feel sick from the smell throughout their classes in the CB. They eventually complained to pro- fessor Tifrah Warner, contract faculty from the department of psychology, about the smell.
“One of the students and a few others complained about the smell,” said Warner. “I didn’t smell it right away but then I noticed it.”
Warner said she started to smell what the students were complaining about around 11:30 a.m., when she started teaching her second class in the CB. At around 12 p.m., Warner made four phone calls to administrators in an attempt to report the smell. She then relocated her students to a room in the Ross Building and continued teaching.
Bilyk said the gas leak occurred because the Vanbot construction crew working at the LSB ruptured a gas pipe. He added it’s Vanbot’s responsibil- ity to survey the location for gas pipes to prevent gas leaks.
According to a Nov. 9 National Post article, the gas leak stopped around 4:30 p.m. once Toronto firefighters had fixed it.
Dell’Angelo said York didn’t seem immediately responsive to early complaints of a strange smell around LSB.
“I hope that York has a better evacuation plan, an emergency plan [next time],” said Dell’Angelo. “There was an explosion in Mexico [on Nov.14] because of gas. That could have happened at York. The gas [could] have been leaking for a long time since I could smell it since 8:30 a.m.”