CASPER — A substance on the floor of a restroom and a custodian who became sick cleaning it up led to a brief hazmat evacuation of the Casper/Natrona International Airport terminal Monday morning.
Airport Director Glenn Januska said a female employee working in a restroom at the airport had cleaned up something on the floor and then became sick shortly after 9 a.m. The employee required an ambulance transport to Banner Wyoming Medical Center, and without know what was on the bathroom floor, the airport initiated its hazmat protocols.
“We thought it may have been an exposure to that substance,” Janusik said. “Out of an abundance of caution we have to assume the worst, so we basically shut down the HVAC system of the terminal building and evacuated the terminal building.”
The county’s Regional Emergency Response Team was called in to test the substance and found it not to be hazardous, although just exactly what it was wasn’t known as of the publication of this story.
While the terminal evacuation was short, the incident did impact an incoming flight to the airport.
Passengers arriving on an inbound United Airlines flight from Denver were deplaned outside the terminal so they could get their bags and walk through an outside gate instead of working their way through the terminal. Januska said the airport chose to allow the flight to land instead of hold it in Denver.
By 11:15 a.m. normal passenger check-in had resumed and no takeoffs were delayed.
Januska said he was not aware of another similar incident that caused an evacuation of a building at the airport.
“We’ve had a couple of instances with different things over the years, but nothing that we had to evacuate the entire building,” he said.
Contact Dale Killingbeck at dale@cowboystatedaily.com
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
