Oxygen Tank Leak Causes Evacuation at UCI Hospital

A slow-leaking tank of highly flammable liquid oxygen Sunday forced evacuation of 13 children from the pediatric ward and a hold on operations in the emergency room at UCI Medical Center in Orange.

For about four hours, officials feared the outbreak of a major, fast-burning fire.

But the tank’s broken valve was repaired without injuries.

And while there was an initial scare about the hospital’s oxygen supply, hospital officials said, the threat was quickly removed when a back-up oxygen system was activated.

“Our internal disaster plan” was followed “remarkably well” said Dr. Gregg Pane, assistant director of UCI’s emergency room.

The fire threat was greater than any oxygen shortage, added hospital spokeswoman Dale Eastman.

Patients Relocated

During the episode, pediatric patients were relocated to the emergency room. Five sparsely populated hospital laboratory buildings were evacuated by 10 a.m. because of the potential fire threat, said Orange Fire Department Capt. Tom Groseclose.

Surgery scheduled for 8:30 a.m. on a burn victim, who already had been brought into an operating room, was canceled because of the oxygen leak, Eastman said. The man was scheduled to have an abdominal abscess drained, and Eastman said a one-day delay would cause no health risk to the patient.

No other operations had been scheduled Sunday, she said.

Groseclose and Pane, Eastman and other hospital officials provided the following account of the incident:

An employee of Airco, a City of Industry firm, arrived at 8:30 a.m. to fill the tank with liquid oxygen. As he tried to turn off the release valve, the stem broke, triggering the leak.

A UC Irvine maintenance man noticed fog drifting out of the tank, located at the northeast corner of the hospital compound. The 3,000-gallon, 30-foot-tall tank is one of two that sit side-by-side and store the hospital’s oxygen supplies.

The Airco worker and the maintenance man tried for 20 minutes to stop the leak, and “when it became clear that they couldn’t,” Eastman said, the pair notified UC Irvine police.

The Orange Fire Department arrived at the hospital and a repair crew from Airco was summoned. The crew was escorted by the California Highway Patrol, sirens on and red lights flashing, from the City of Industry to the hospital.

In its pure and liquid form, oxygen provides a highly concentrated source of fuel for fires. (The air people normally breathe is about 16% oxygen). Had the emergency room been permeated by the liquid oxygen and had someone struck a match, for instance, “it could have been dangerous,” Groseclose said. “It wouldn’t have exploded, but it would burn extremely fast.”

UCI officials called the county emergency radio network, which contacted what are called “base” hospitals, from which instructions are broadcast to paramedics en route to emergency rooms.

Room Re-Opened

The paramedics were instructed to transport patients--no one knew how many that might be--to other hospital emergency rooms, Pane said. The UCI emergency room was then used to house some of the children from pediatrics. The emergency room was reopened by 2:30 p.m.

Pane said cardiac arrests and anyone who came in with a dire medical condition would have been treated immediately at the emergency room. But such cases did not occur, he said.

About 45 firefighters from Orange, Anaheim and Garden Grove, as well as hazardous materials teams from Anaheim and Orange County fire departments, set up a command post outside the storage tank, which is located between the emergency room and the main hospital building.

A hazardous materials team shut off a valve connecting the liquid oxygen to the hospital system by 1:30 p.m., allowing the backup oxygen supply to kick in.

Enough Oxygen Tanks

The backup system of non-liquid oxygen provides oxygen for at least 24 hours and can be replenished indefinitely, Eastman said.

Almost immediately, tanks of oxygen scattered throughout the hospital were rounded up, officials said.

“We were never in danger of running out,” Eastman added.

The hazardous materials workers and the Airco repair crew managed to clamp off the valve by 1:45 p.m., Eastman said, and it is to be repaired permanently today. She added that the leak is the first of its kind in at least a decade at the hospital, located on The City Drive near the Santa Ana Freeway.