Officials: School closed Thursday after mercury spill

LENOIR, N.C. — School officials announced Wednesday evening that Whitnel Elementary School would be closed Thursday after a mercury spill on the campus.

Four children were taken to a hospital after being exposed to mercury Wednesday at the school, officials said. Students at Whitnel Elementary School on Hibriten Drive were evacuated from the school after the mercury exposure.

Officials said a child brought a vial of mercury to the school and it spilled on the floor of a fifth-grade classroom. The student brought it in to show her friends after her brother found it in a junkyard, one classmate said.

Joshua Hernandez said he was in social studies class when the girl pulled out the vial.

“She dropped it and I didn't know what it was, so I just tried to help her get it back into the tube,” he said.

Neither of them knew the substance was dangerous. Joshua said he tried to scoop up the mess before the teacher discovered it.

"It kept on rolling out of my hand,” he said.

Their teacher saw it and told them she had to call emergency crews right away.

“I thought I was going to die,” Joshua said. “I'm so freaked out.”

Emergency workers took his shoes and made him wash his hands for 20 minutes.

“I was scared that, oh my God, something (is) going to really happen to me, really bad,” Joshua said.

He and the girl who brought the vial were two of four students taken to the hospital. Joshua said he had no symptoms.

School officials called his parents and told them to meet him at the hospital.

“It scared me, but I just kept calm,” his mother, Jody Hernandez, said.

They were relieved to learn he and the other students were fine.

Chasity Stevens said her daughter was one of students inside the classroom where the mercury spilled.

“I'm scared to death,” she said. “I'm nervous.”

The students who were in the classroom when the spill happened were allowed to go home, but their parents had to first bring a change of clothes for them to wear. The clothes they were wearing at the time of the spill had to be left at the school, so they could be secured by a hazardous waste team.

The rest of the students at the school were taken to Whitnel Central Baptist, about a mile away, where they were picked up by their parents.

Parents who were at first rattled by the incident were pleased with the response by officials.

“I think they're doing a really good job of evacuating the kids and getting with their parents,” mother Nancy Fenner said.

Officials with the EPA came in from Atlanta because of the situation.

WSOC