TAMPA, Fla. — After several hours of tense work, a hazmat situation at Johns Hopkins All Children's Outpatient Care in Tampa involving potentially explosive gas and batteries was safely eliminated Thursday afternoon.
Everything started Thursday morning when employees at the facility smelled an odor coming from an MRI room and called 911. Johns Hopkins said the center on Bruce B. Downs Boulevard experienced several power issues Wednesday, hours before the Thursday incident.
"The batteries are back up for their MRI so if there MRI goes down or if there’s an electrical problem in the building, these batteries, panel of powerful batteries, will back up their MRI system," said Rob Herrin, Hillsborough County Fire Rescue Public Safety Information Chief.
Once on scene, Hillsborough County Fire Rescue (HCFR) determined the smell wasn't electrical and immediately worked to evacuate 80 people from the building. Out of those 80 people, 10 were medically evaluated at the scene and three were taken to a local hospital.
At the scene, rescue workers determined the situation involved a bank of 30 lithium-ion batteries weighing 100 pounds each.
After initially saying there wasn't a threat of an explosion, things changed a little after 12:30 p.m. That's when Fire Rescue said hydrogen gas from the batteries, two batteries rupturing, and the number of batteries at the scene posed a risk of explosion.
"As far as the danger, lithium-ion batteries have any number of gases, the biggest, we were concerned with today was hydrogen which we did show hydrogen. It’s explosive and we had pretty explosive levels of hydrogen contained in that small room," said Herrin.
Crews and media at the scene were immediately moved further back from the facility. HCFR called in support from the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office's bomb squad and robot to help work the scene.
According to HCFR, the situation became more challenging as the batteries have swollen in their compartments, which makes disconnecting them more difficult.
By 2:30 p.m., HCFR said the level of hydrogen gas had decreased, but first responders at the scene weren't "out of the woods" yet.
Rescue workers at the facility successfully removed the batteries from the building around 4 p.m. The bomb squad was then canceled and the worries of a possible explosion were eliminated.
Workers put the batteries into drums full of sodium bicarbonate and a third-party vendor will take them from the scene and dispose of them.
Hillsborough County Fire Rescue said powerful pressure fans were brought into the building to help ventilate the impacted area.
