Dozens of people were evacuated from a building in Burnaby Thursday night, one of them overcome, by a strong chemical smell in the air.
“One of our guys in shipping was dumping garbage bins, and he comes stumbling in from outside saying he can’t breathe, clutching his throat,” said Joseph Bilac, one of about 75 workers on shift at a glass fabricator near North Fraser Way and Wiggins Road before 11 p.m.
“I asked him what it smelled like, and he said it was kind of a chemical smell outside.”
Bilac, who is also a first aid attendant at Garibaldi Glass, described it as a bleach-like odour that caused an immediate reaction in his coworker.
“He was doubled over coughing, there’s mucous coming out of his nose, his eyes are watery, he’s saying he can’t breathe, and he’s dry heaving into a garbage can. I had to half-drag him, because he was stumbling, to get him into our office area, because we have an HVAC system in there, and hopefully the air is filtered a bit.”
Bilac says he could see a haze in the air outside.
“I noticed the lights across the parking lot, they weren’t the normal white colour … they looked kind of yellow-ish. That’s when in realized there was probably some kind of chemical in the air, and that’s when I made the decision to start closing all our bay doors in our shop in order to try to prevent it from getting inside.”
The chemical smell triggered a hazardous materials response by the Burnaby Fire Department and the RCMP, with the building evacuated and part of the industrial neighbourhood cordoned off as crews tried to determine the source of the apparent leak or spill.
“Four people ended up being checked over the ambulance,” Bilac told CityNews. “I believe they opted to take all of them to the hospital out of an abundance of caution. I only saw one guy get oxygen administered, and that was the poor guy I mentioned.”
Bilac says most businesses in the area are closed at night and is unsure where the chemical smell was coming from, though hazardous materials crews could be seen focusing on a nearby building.
A Canada Post facility and an Amazon distribution warehouse are also in the area, but it is unclear whether they were affected by the evacuation.
The Burnaby Fire Department had cleared the scene by 4 a.m. 1130 NewsRadio has reached out to the department for an update on its response.
With files from Jack Rabb.
