BRUSLY, La. — A stench from a leaking barge disrupted daily activities in Brusly Wednesday, causing elementary school students to leave school early and police to block off a section of highway and the Mississippi River levee.
State Police spokesman Johnnie Brown identified the chemical that caused the smell as sodium hydrosulfide.
Health effects of inhaling sodium hydrosulfide can include dizziness, eye irritation, headaches, nausea and vomiting.
Brown said the barge belongs to Kirby Inland Marine, a marine transportation service, and that emergency crews traced the smell to a faulty seal on a six-inch pipe on the barge.
Officials told people in the area to stay inside with windows and doors closed and air conditioners off from 8:40 a.m to 1:45 p.m.
Wind blowing westward from the river pushed vapors — described as having a “rotten egg” smell — into the town.
Though Brusly is across the river from the University, the vapor leak did not appear to reach campus.
West Baton Rouge Parish School Board Officials sent students at Lukesville Upper Elementary School home early on their usual bus routes and Brusly Elementary School students to the parish community center in Port Allen.
Brusly Elementary’s students are in kindergarten through second grade, and Lukesville’s are in third through fifth grade.
The schools’ combined enrollments number about 700 students.
Dawn Bourque, WBR Middle School supervisor, said these students were let out of school as a “precautionary” measure because of their schools’ proximity to the leaking barge.
None of the students were “sick or ill” because of the vapors, she said.
At the community center around 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Brusly Elementary Principal Elaine Strauss talked on her cell phone to coordinate ways for her students to get home.
She counted and called the remaining eight students by name as they sat on the floor drinking juice and eating chili dogs and pizza.
“They’re telling us it wasn’t anything dangerous to the kids,” Strauss said.
Brusly Elementary teachers and students often have emergency drills for fires and tornadoes, Strauss said, and the procedure for Wednesday’s evacuation was similar to these drills.
“But, since we have a plan, the teachers knew just what to do,” she said. “It turned into a really good drill.”
Students at Brusly Middle and High schools were not sent home, but were kept in their classes and not allowed to go outside, Bourque said. These two schools were not as close to the leak as the elementary schools.
The West Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Department and State Police blocked off part of River Road in Brusly and an adjacent part of the levee near the schools to prevent passersby from getting too close to the fumes.
Volunteers from the Capital Area chapter of the Red Cross took food and other relief supplies to workers who were trying to stop the leak on the barge.
Representatives from Kirby Marine — whose corporate office is in Houston — did not return phone calls by press time Wednesday.
Emergency workers were attempting to stop the leak at press time.