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Odor prompts schools to lock down

By SAUNDRA AMRHEIN and S.I. ROSENBAUM
Published September 30, 2006

A mysterious ammonia-like odor wafted over parts of eastern Hillsborough County Friday morning, prompting three schools to keep children inside while fire officials searched for its source.

They never found it, Hillsborough County Fire Rescue spokesman Ray Yeakley said.

About 25 firefighters, including a hazardous materials team, scoured the area from Big Bend Road north to Boyette Road and Balm-Riverview Road west to U.S. 301, he said.

They found no broken pipelines and got no hits on air sampling meters, he said.

The smell perplexed principals, parents, pipeline and fertilizer companies, whose officials said the odor could not be traced to their equipment.

Not taking chances, schools in the area - Summerfield, Sessums, Symmes and Collins elementaries, Rodgers Middle and Riverview High - all kept their children inside, except for those leaving with parents.

At Summerfield Elementary, the phone rang constantly as a trickle of parents came to pick up their children.

"I live in the area where it's supposedly safe to breathe," said Angela Tirpak as she signed out her 5-year-old daughter. "I'd rather have her back home."

Kathy Sanders picked up her son, Hunter, 5.

"He's got asthma, and I was just concerned," she said.

Meanwhile, school staffer Susan Maw fielded a flood of calls from parents.

"They're perfectly safe," she reassured one caller. "The kids are going about their day normally. They're just not allowed to go outside."

"Yes, we are on lockdown," she told another caller. "There was an ammonia odor in the air."

A child at Sessums reportedly got sick, according to Yeakley, who added that the boy has a history of asthma.

At 9 a.m., the odor at the 7-Eleven at the corner of Boyette and Bell Shoals Roads in Lithia was strong enough to make Heidi Strickland's throat burn.

"It was just bad, nasty smelling, burn-your-eyes smell," she said.

There was a fog, she said, "like a film in the air."

Local companies who store or transport anhydrous ammonia were just as puzzled. Anhydrous ammonia is combined with phosphate to make fertilizer.

Kinder Morgan owns an anhydrous ammonia storage tank near the Port of Tampa but it sits more than 5 miles outside the zone of the suspicious odor, said Helen Wells, spokeswoman for Houston-based firm. The company didn't find anything wrong with the tank or its 200-mile Central Florida Pipeline, which moves gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from the Port of Tampa to Orlando International Airport.

Officials at Tampa Pipeline Corp. were equally stumped. The company owns two pipelines that move ammonia from the Port of Tampa to fertilizer plants in Polk County.

"We're scratching our heads," said Glen Howell, general manager of Tampa Pipeline.

Workers checked valves and the pipelines and did not find any breach or leak, Howell said.

"None of it makes sense," he said.

David Townsend, spokesman for Mosaic Fertilizer, said workers conducted a full inspection of its Riverview plant but found no leaks of anhydrous ammonia.

Because the gas dissipates quickly, Townsend speculated that it possibly could have leaked from a moving source, like a truck, in order to cover such a wide swath so quickly.

The smell had vanished by noon.

"It's a puzzle," he said.

Times staff writer Saundra Amrhein can be reached at 661-2441 or amrhein@sptimes.com

[Last modified September 30, 2006, 06:23:10]