Carbon monoxide leak closes community centre

A COMMUNITY centre has been closed due to a potentially life-threatening carbon monoxide leak.

Firefighters were called to Whitfield Community Centre, in Whitfield Avenue, Westlands, shortly after 10pm yesterday following reports of a gas leak.

But they soon realised that carbon monoxide had been filling the building's roof space due to a faulty flue attached to the boiler.

The firefighters told the community centre supervisor that the building would have to be closed until the problem was resolved.

Although only two people were at the centre when the firefighters arrived, up to 60 had been using the building earlier in the evening.

Watch commander Neil Broad advised anyone who believed they may have been affected by the carbon monoxide to seek medical attention.

He said: "We spoke to the responsible person at the community centre and asked him to get in touch with the people who had been there earlier in the evening. If they feel light headed they should go to the hospital.

"This could have been potentially quite serious. Carbon monoxide is a very dangerous, poisonous gas, and if anybody breathed it in for a prolonged period there's a possibility they may not be with us now. It is also explosive."

The firefighters themselves, who did not realise at first that it was a carbon monoxide leak, had to go to hospital for blood tests, although none were seriously affected.

Mr Broad added: "We never suspected it was carbon monoxide. We were responding to a smell of gas, which we do all the time. But things didn't seem to fit and so we brought our gas monitoring equipment into the premises and then we got the alarms ringing.

"A flue was disconnected which meant all the products of combustion were being vented into the roof space, so it was full of carbon monoxide.

"Our equipment starts to give some sort of warning at 10 parts per million, but this was about 600 parts per million."