Vancouver Fire and Rescue responded to a report of a freon gas leak at the Neville Scarfe Building close to 9 a.m. this morning. Around that time, the fire department confirmed that the hazard was contained and left the situation with Plant Operations to confirm that everything was safe.
Freon is a a stable, nonflammable, moderately toxic gas or liquid which is used as a refrigerant.
Mike Danchuk, refrigeration head at UBC building operations, later said it was a false alarm.
"Where we have large machines that hold a certain amount of refrigerant, we have alarm systems, censors that will flag in case there is a leak," said Danchuk. "So when that alarm went off we always assume it's a worst case scenario that there actually is a leak."
According to Danchuk, they don't know what set off the alarm but "it may have been some people working in the space but we're not sure."
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