On Thursday, April 27th at approximately 5:30PM Region 10's Emergency Response Duty officer was contacted by Idaho Communications Center and informed of a mercury spill in Timberline High School located in Weippe Idaho. Weippe is a small rural community located in Clearwater County in North-central Idaho app 200 miles north of Boise. According to the Clearwater County Sheriff’s office several teenage boys were caught playing with and spilling mercury from one of the school’s classrooms. School staff were not able to completely clean up the material, and the responding Sheriff's department officials had concerns over remaining contamination and risks to the health of students and school staff. The school complex which contains an approximate 20 classroom high school and a 4 room junior high school was scheduled to be closed Friday and throughout the weekend. Based upon the reported situation and the lack of locally available technical assistance to assess the suspected contamination EPA dispatched an OSC and 4 START personnel with emergency response equipment including mercury vapor detection and air monitoring devices.
Air sampling results for both buildings have been received, and are within acceptable protective ranges for reoccupancy by school students and staff. These results were communicated via phone to the school principal. One START member returned to the school on 5/16/06 to ensure proper disposal of mercury contaminated debris that was staged there. It has been disposed of, and no further work is expected, except for that of an administrative nature. All site work is complete.
Nothing further.
A letter report is being written by START, and a final closeout letter, along with a written copy of the sample results will be sent to the school.
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