Gas victims found hours later

SALEM, Va. (AP) — Rescue workers were on the scene of a July 14 carbon-monoxide leak at Roanoke College for three hours before finding an elderly man dead in a dormitory room, according to an internal Salem Fire-EMS Department report published yesterday.

The report acquired by the Roanoke Times through a Freedom of Information Act request shows Walter J. Vierling and two women were the last victims found because the doors to their rooms opened to the outside of the building. The other rooms housing the more than 100 victims opened to an interior hallway used by firefighters.

“Things were very hectic, emotions were running high,” said department Chief Pat Counts. “I would like to say we go out and do it perfectly every time, but we don’t. And that’s just life.”

It was not clear whether Mr. Vierling, a 91-year-old retired pastor from Giles County attending a church conference at the college, might have lived had he been found sooner.

Dr. Susan E. Venuti, the assistant chief medical examiner for the state, who conducted the autopsy, said chronic heart and lung disease contributed to Mr. Vierling’s carbon-monoxide-poisoning death. She said it was impossible to pinpoint when he died.

Rescue squads were called to the Sections dormitory at 6:40 a.m. for what turned out to be a carbon-monoxide leak from a gas-powered hot-water heater that malfunctioned. Dozens of emergency vehicles arrived, and 113 persons were taken to hospitals with ailments that ranged from serious carbon-monoxide poisoning to mild headaches and upset stomachs.

Workers had sent what they thought were the last victims to hospitals and were taking down a triage center when one of two women staying in a first-floor room similar to Mr. Vierling’s managed to call 911, Chief Counts said. Officials responded and found one woman in and out of consciousness and a second one who was barely breathing.

After the women were rushed to the hospital, rescue workers discovered Mr. Vierling in his room at 10:12 a.m. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Nobody else died.

Chief Counts said Mr. Vierling and the two women were missed in a room-to-room search that was completed by 8:15 a.m. Not only did their rooms not open to the interior hallway used by firefighters, but one of the exterior doors was partially hidden by a wheelchair ramp, he said.

Roanoke College spokeswoman Teresa Gereaux said the rooms in which Mr. Vierling and the two women were staying were designed to be handicapped-accessible as part of a remodeling in the mid-1980s.

Mr. Vierling’s daughter, Corbin Vierling, of Pembroke, declined to comment.