Gas leak in Park Street school triggers panic, students evacuated to safety

A gas leak scare sparked tension among the students and teachers of a private English medium school in Park Street on Thursday.

The incident occurred at Harrow Hall School when some examinations were going on.

Some students who were giving their exams first felt a pungent smell and informed the matter to the staff members of the school.

The incident occurred around 11 am. Even the teachers who were in the staff room felt the smell. The gas leak triggered tension among the students who began running out of the rooms in panic.

School authorities took prompt action and evacuated the students and informed the matter to the fire department.

Two fire tenders were rushed to the spot immediately after the incident. Senior police officers also reached the spot to control the situation.

Teachers at the school said that the gas might have leaked from an adjacent building.

Firefighters suspect that it was a possible LPG leak and evacuated the school as a precautionary measure to prevent any untoward incident. They carried out a thorough search to detect the source of the leak, but failed to find it anywhere in the school premises.

A detailed probe has been started into the incident. As the suspected leak happened during school hours, all the students were sent back home immediately.

According to preliminary investigation, the fire department suspects that it might be a leakage of LPG, commonly used in cooking gas cylinders which can be highly hazardous.

Gas leaks can be attributed to anything from defective rubber tube or faulty regulator fitting and poor handling of gas appliances.

If inhaled, it can create a lack of oxygen in lungs and cause hypoxia leading to suffocation.

A teacher said that she felt a pungent smell in the staff room around 11.10 am and all the students were immediately evacuated from the school building.

A senior official of the fire brigade said that though they could not find any gas leakage inside 

the school campus, they would carry out a more detailed search once again to find the source.

However, a few hours after the incident, there was no smell of gas in the school.Fire department officials were also examining whether there was an LPG leakage in the adjacent building.