Gas Leak Sends 20 Pacoima Students, Teacher’s Aide to Hospitals

Natural gas escaping from a ruptured pipeline in Pacoima drifted onto the campus of a nearby junior high school early Tuesday, temporarily halting classes and sending 20 students and a teacher’s aide to hospitals with complaints of eye irritation and nausea, authorities said.

Students and teachers at Charles Maclay Junior High School first noticed the smell shortly before 9 a.m., about 45 minutes after school had started, Principal Leonard George said. School officials called the Los Angeles Fire Department and directed students to leave their classrooms and gather on athletic fields, he said.

“The smell was very strong,” George said.

The 20 students who complained of nausea and other ailments were examined by paramedics and taken to three nearby hospitals for observation, George said. All were released to their parents by early afternoon, hospital representatives said.

A teacher’s aide who is six months pregnant was transferred to the AMI Tarzana Regional Medical Center for 24-hour observation, authorities said.

A contractor’s crew working about 1 1/2 miles south of the school accidentally cut a section of 12-inch pipe in the 10200 block of Glenoaks Boulevard shortly before 8 a.m., said Vicki Cho, Southern California Gas Co. spokeswoman. Pressurized natural gas escaped for about an hour, causing temporary evacuation of about a dozen businesses in the largely industrial area along Glenoaks, Cho said.

“Our crews shut off the gas at about 9 a.m.,” Cho said. “We got a few calls from customers in the area complaining about the odor. It’s not harmful once it is dissipated in the atmosphere.”

Cho said the weather--hot, humid and smoggy--may have made the smell worse. “When it’s like this, odors just hang,” she said.