The Redmond HealthPoint community clinic is slated to reopen Friday morning (May 6) after an industrial hygienist deemed the downtown office safe for staff members and patients, according to the clinic’s marketing and community relation manager Diana Olsen.
A series of additional tests conducted today (May 5) did not reveal anything hazardous or abnormal following Wednesday morning’s Hazmat scare, which attracted Redmond police and fire officials — and even the FBI.
“They’re not finding anything,” Olsen said. “We’ve declared it safe for everybody to go back in.”
Olsen said the industrial hygienist, who specializes in finding and preventing environmental factors that may cause stress or sickness at the workplace, also collected extra samples that will be tested in a lab for precautionary measures.
The clinic has been closed since Wednesday morning after 13 people at HealthPoint clinic, located at 16315 N.E. 87th St., were transported to the emergency room at nearby Evergreen Medical Center after they said they felt nauseous and dizzy.
All of the employees inside building B in the Together Center, including 20 employees and five patients from HealthPoint, were cleared out right before crews from the Redmond, Woodinville and Bellevue fire departments responded to the scene at around 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, according to Redmond Police Department spokesperson Jim Bove.
HealthPoint was the only business that was affected by the smell, but the whole B building, which included three other nonprofit organizations, was evacuated for precautionary reasons.
Authorities shut down 87th Street between 161st and 164th avenues northeast for about four hours as they performed air tests.
The air tests by fire crews and the Eastside Hazardous Materials Team showed nothing suspicious or hazardous, Bove said.
An FBI Hazardous Materials team was also called in for precautionary reasons, Bove said.
Bove said “there is nothing that is alarming … there are really no red flags going up on our end.”
The 13 who were transported to the hospital have been released and are doing fine, Olsen said.
Leighsa Francis, manager of the Redmond HealthPoint clinic, said staff members smelt an odor coming from the physicians’ quarters in the back of the medical center. Olsen confirmed that the source of the smell was concentrated in the physicians’ quarters. While the cause of the smell has not been found, the air quality is safe for staff and patients, Olsen said.
Francis said she felt light-headed, but she was not transported to the hospital, adding that she felt “fine” Wednesday afternoon.
One woman who was transported to the hospital and later released said the odor smelled like “burning tires” and “gas.” Employees were allowed to re-enter the building around 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday.
Olsen said patients who had appointments on Wednesday and Thursday were re-routed to HealthPoint’s Bothell and Renton clinics.
