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Wednesday, February 12, 2003

By Jane Elizabeth, Post-Gazette Education Writer

More than two dozen animals died at Keystone Oaks High School over the weekend when a computer malfunction caused the heating system in the school's biology labs to spike as high as 116 degrees.

School officials suspect "a glitch in the software" that controls the school's thermostat, said district spokeswoman Ruth Hawk. The software allows different parts of the building to be set at different temperatures, and in this case, the labs were the only rooms affected by the heat.

All the animals kept in the labs died. They included two rabbits, a ball python, three corn snakes including one albino corn snake, one guinea pig, three rats, eight mice, six hamsters, two aquatic frogs and a beta fish.

A chinchilla in a room across the hall was not affected.

School officials had not determined yesterday when or why the heating system went haywire, and why security guards had not detected the high heat during weekend rounds.

The dead animals were discovered by maintenance workers around 5:30 Monday morning.

Coincidentally, a water pipe had burst in the school's business offices on the ground floor. A small flood left the floor covered in water. When workers began inspecting the building, they found the high temperatures in the first-floor biology labs and the dead animals.

The animals were not used for dissection or experimentation but for observation and as classroom pets, Hawk said.

One of the rabbits belonged to a teacher's grandson, she added.

"Interestingly enough, the biology teacher said she comes in every weekend, but this was the first weekend she didn't," Hawk said.

Maintenance personnel didn't work over the weekend, she said, but guards from Allied Security Inc. are supposed to patrol inside and outside the school. She said school officials are investigating why the guards didn't notice the high heat in the labs.

The labs were part of a $15 million high school renovation project that was completed late last year. W.G. Tomko and Sons Inc. installed the heating system. The project manager could not be reached for comment yesterday.

"Meetings are going on as we speak" to determine what went wrong, said Hawk. "We don't have the answers yet."

While reptiles can withstand high temperatures for a somewhat longer period of time, animals such as rabbits and hamsters wouldn't have survived for long in such heat, said Dormont veterinarian David Dorn.

Even at West Liberty Animal Hospital, where Dorn works and sees many emergency cases, heat stroke is rare.

"In most cases the animal has some sense that it's warm and they try to move," he said.

When trapped in higher temperatures, "the animal gets dehydrated as well as overheated," he said.

The overheated animal will experience cell death, Dorn said. The protein in the cells changes structure, hemoglobin can no longer carry oxygen, and dehydration and death follow.

He said he could not be sure how long the animals suffered in the heat before they died.

"It depends how fast the temperature went up," he said.

Hawk said yesterday that the animals would be replaced, but it hadn't been determined when, or whether insurance would cover some of those costs.

Damage from the water pipe break, confined mostly to the carpets, is estimated at $4,000 and will be covered by insurance, she said.