First responders were called onto the scene last week after a bunch of schoolkids got sick after doing a science experiment.
As Nashville’s WKRN reported, the third graders in the central Tennessee town of Gallatin were doing an experiment with dry ice, conducted by an unnamed “outside group,” when several reported to the school nurse’s office with nausea.
Fearing a “mass casualty incident,” as the Sumner County Emergency Medical Service said in a statement relayed to local reporters, first responders ranging from the fire department to the sheriff and police were brought to the school. Nineteen people, including 18 students and one teacher, were eventually taken to the hospital, and the kids’ parents were notified.
As the Local 12 news outlet added, the students and their teacher were treated for carbon dioxide poisoning — which makes sense, given that dry ice is just CO2 frozen solid.
Beyond those initial 19 taken to be checked out at the hospital, another 20 who’d been present for the experiment were assessed by paramedics.
In an interview with WKRN, the parents of one of the kids who got sick during the incident seemed very ticked off about the way the school handled the situation.
“The most information I have gotten at this point is out of a 9-year-old that is not feeling well,” disgruntled dad Ben Amboy told the local news. “Not out of a doctor, not out of a representative from the school, nothing.”
Amboy urged the Sumner County school district to step up its communication game during emergencies, which sounds like a polite Southern way of saying its officials need to get their act together. Given how often schools are under siege from gunmen these days, it’s not bad advice.
