‘Like when you open a bottle of bleach’
Fire chief pleased with efficiency of evacuation at Burlington slaughterhouse after dangerous ammonia leak
BURLINGTON The Ministry of Labour says it continues to investigate an ammonia leak at a Burlington slaughterhouse that spurred the evacuation of hundreds of workers and sent more than a dozen to hospital Thursday.
Twenty-one employees of Sonia Foods — a pork processing plant that houses Fearmans Pork Inc. on Appleby Line — were ultimately treated as a precautionary measure due to the dangerous leak first reported around 11 a.m., said Chief Karen Roche of Burlington’s fire department. In an interview late Thursday night, Roche said the leak occurred in a separated pipe on the plant’s second floor.
Ammonia is used as a refrigerant coolant at the plant where some 700 people are employed. The faulty pipe released a high enough level of the potent chemical that a sensor was set off alerting emergency crews.
“At one point the levels of ammonia were extremely high,” she said.
But Roche warned “any level” of the colourless gas can be toxic. “It’s just such an irritating chemical, it burns your airways and can be lifethreatening,” she said. “Thankfully, all the staff were quickly removed.”
Indeed, blaring alarms prompted hundreds of workers to hastily file out of the plant — a move Roche called critical given the quickly developing leak. They were moved on city buses and relocated to a couple local arenas while fire crews remained at the plant.
“When the alarm’s going off and the supervisors tell you to get out, you know it’s serious,” said one worker sitting in the lot at Appleby Arena, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution at work. “It was pretty scary, but everyone was out in two or three minutes.”
“You could smell the ammonia from outside, like when you open a bottle of bleach,” said another worker, who also asked not to be named and was outside at the time of the leak.
Employees who work on the first floor of the plant were allowed to go back inside and gather their belongings around 8 p.m. on Thursday — about nine hours after the leak was reported, said Roche.
It wasn’t the first time the plant experienced an ammonia leak that caused lines to be temporarily shut down.
On March 7, 2001, the plant — then called Maple Leaf Pork — had to evacuate 650 workers and close down for the day after an ammonia leak occurred during routine maintenance on a refrigeration compressor.
Roche said ammonia leaks in Burlington seldom happen, but require immediate attention.
“Things of this nature can always have a terrible outcome, and I think the fact that people evacuated so quickly today, I was very pleased with that.”
A Ministry of Labour spokesperson said one inspector, hygienist and engineer have been assigned to its probe of the leak. The investigation is ongoing.