An ammonia leak at the Park City Ice Arena forced the evacuation of employees and guests on Saturday. Park City Fire District’s Haz-Mat team arrived around 3:30 pm with 10 responders trained to deal with hazardous materials like the chlorine gas used to refrigerate the ice sheet. Carolyn Murray has this:
The Park City Fire Department spent about 4 hours at the Ice Arena on Saturday. They were able to identify the source of the leak, shut it off and ventilate the area. No one was sickened or exposed according to Deputy Fire Chief Bob Zanetti. He says ammonia gas is dangerous and they use sophisticated equipment when responding to this kind of a call.
“We have a Haz-Mat Team, a group of individuals that have extensive training and with the equipment, we have what’s called a PID and we can go in and measure gases to their dangerous levels. It came through as a typical 911, a typical alarm, really no different than a smoke alarm in a building. And, then when it was determined it was not a false alarm, they called out the Haz-Mat Team. Each day we have between 10 and 15 Haz-Mat technicians on duty. We always have our SCBA’s, Self-Contained Breathing Apparatuses, for fire so those are actually worn under the suits. They have 30- 35 minutes to go in and assess the situation and they can come back and get what they need and send another team in if needed.”
Amanda Angevine (An ja vin) is the General Manager of the Ice Arena and she says they’ve addressed the problems with the equipment that allowed the leak to occur.
“Valves didn’t fail themselves. Actually, what happened is there are some safety switches that worked. What happened is …..the VFD, Variable Frequency Drive on the evaporative condenser…that had a glitch and there are four fail safes for that system, that the glitch triggered, and those are the four valves I think you’re referring to. They’re called cut out switches that need to be replaced and those have been replaced.”
The ammonia alarm goes off every time power is lost but, in this case, it went off because of the leak.
“When the ammonia alarm goes off, a staff member goes back and checks the compressor room and before you enter the compressor room, there’s a meter that reads if there is any ammonia in that room. And that meter did read that there was ammonia present. So, that time the alarm was going off and the alarm automatically called the fire department, so the staff called operations and myself…the alarm company called the Ice Arena, to see if everything is okay and they dispatch someone right away. So, there was someone right away, on their way, as soon as the alarm goes off.”
Angevine says they opened later Saturday evening but had to reschedule a couple of programs for Sunday morning due to the operational complications of the refrigeration unit.
“So, the refrigeration without those safety features…if the refrigeration was going to run…we needed someone, Mike Diersen specifically, to watch the system run and to make sure that all the pressures stayed at a safe level because those safety features were not in tact, so it needed to physically be babysat and monitored. Overnight, we let the temperature of the ice increase so that the refrigeration wouldn’t run without him being there and it just needed extra time in the morning to cool down before we could let anybody be on it.”
Angevine says everything is running on a regular schedule now and none of the patrons or employees were in any danger because of the safety protocols and emergency response.