After evacuating students from Hamilton’s St. Joseph Catholic Elementary School three days in a row last week for a suspected gas leak, the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board says there was no leak at the school and the smell of gas was coming from somewhere else.

Parents of children at the school told CBC Hamilton that students were removed from the Locke Street school for varying amounts of time on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday last week, and were told there was a potential gas leak.

Board spokesperson Debbie McGreal-Dinning said the school followed its safety protocols and worked closely with the Hamilton Fire Department and Enbridge Gas, who determined there was no gas leak within the school.

“The odour that was detected originated from an external source unrelated to the school, though it was intermittently noticeable inside the building,” said McGreal-Dinning on Wednesday, adding the board hired contractors to test and check ventilation throughout the school over the weekend “as an added precaution.” 

She said school operations were back to normal on Monday.

“Throughout this process, the safety of students and staff remained our highest priority, and families were kept informed,” she said, but did not answer questions about whether she knew the source of the gas or if it has been resolved.

Natural gas that has leaked into the air can cause respiratory symptoms including suffocation, according to an Enbridge safety data sheet. “Vapours are heavier than air and can cause suffocation by reducing oxygen available for breathing. Symptoms of oxygen deficiency include respiratory difficulty, headache, dizziness, nausea, unconsciousness or death.”

Gas leaks are also an explosion risk. In case of a potential leak, Enbridge warns against using phones or electronics, turning appliances or lights on and off, using lighters or matches, or starting vehicles near the leak.

“Natural gas is combustible, and if it were to accumulate in an enclosed space and encounter an ignition source, it could pose a serious safety risk,” Enbridge spokesperson Chloe Mills told CBC Hamilton in an email Wednesday.

“That’s why emergency responders and gas utilities treat any reported odour seriously and prioritize moving people from the area while the source is investigated. We advise anyone who smells gas to leave the area immediately.”

‘Insane environment’ across the street but teachers did their best, says parent

Claire Maharaj, who has two kids who go to St. Joseph’s, said she first heard about it from her son Desmond, who is in Grade 5, after school last Wednesday.

He told her they were outside for a while, and then let back inside after the fire department came and said it was safe.

“Then Thursday we got some frantic calls from the teachers saying that they had been evacuated again and they were at the parish hall and [St. Joseph’s] church across the street,” she said, noting the students were at the church already for mass, but were allowed to go back into the school and get their stuff before returning to the church in the early afternoon.

“When I got there to pick them up, the gas van was there but no fire engines or anything,” Maharaj said. “They kept saying it was fine but you could smell gas.”

On Friday, she sent the kids on the school bus as usual but was called around 10:30 a.m. saying they’d been evacuated to the church again. 

“They were playing and they had games and they were reading and all kinds of stuff,” said Maharaj, who found the pickup requests inconvenient for her work schedule but otherwise said the school staff did a good job and she was confident they had the kids’ safety in mind. 

But with kids from multiple grades all mixed together in one room, “it was an insane environment there at the parish hall,” she said.

Grade 5 student says he prayed for his school

Desmond, 10, said that the repeated evacuations and related alarms at the school were upsetting to some kids.

“There was an eighth of the school that was just screaming and crying,” he told CBC Hamilton on Friday afternoon. “I was praying [for the school] because we were in church.”

But overall, he said he liked being evacuated from his classroom.

“It was not disruptive because I didn’t get any homework for the weekend,” he said.