An eight-month-old baby is dead and four children remain in critical condition after an incident involving insecticide prompted emergency crews to evacuate a Fort McMurray apartment.

At 3:02 p.m. Sunday, RCMP helped evacuate the first floor of a residential building at 81 Fraser Ave. after the children, who were all from the unit where the spill occurred, were taken to hospital. Regional Emergency Services confirmed Monday that the unit was affected by the presence of a poisonous substance called phosphine, which is used as an insecticide.

“The danger is that it’s regulated and it’s regulated for a reason,” said Brad Grainger, RES deputy chief of operations. “With this type of exposure and the time that the family was exposed to it, it just continued to compound the issue is what it ended up doing.”

Two other children, ages two and six, were transported to Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton by air ambulance. The remaining two children, ages four and seven, are in a Fort McMurray hospital with their mother, who remains under observation. The condition of the remaining children is reported to be critical. The father of the deceased child is in Edmonton with the other children.

Cameron said it was a tragic incident. “It’s not very nice ... They’re having a pretty rough time of things, as you can imagine,” he said at a media briefing Monday, saying it’s hard on first responders. “Who likes to go for a call for service like that?”

According to Grainger, the family went to the hospital with a sample of the chemical. The hospital notified the fire department, who called in the RCMP and a dangerous goods team.

The family presented themselves at the hospital, because they were all sick, and they presented a sample of the product at the hospital,” Grainger said. “Our dangerous goods team was called in because the hospital was unable to identify it.”

RES said remaining units are safe, and they’ve performed three air quality tests since the incident. The most recent, at 1:00 p.m. Monday, confirmed a phosphine level of 3.8 to 4.0 parts per million in the affected apartment, with 1.0 ppm considered the acceptable level for short-term exposure and 50 ppm a fatal amount.

“When we talk about a limited short-term exposure ... that’s within 15 minutes, and you have to get in, get out and go back to a well-ventilated area,” Grainger said. “If you’re not, then an area of 50 ppm can be immediately life threatening.”

Early across-the-board air quality tests were inconclusive, and only this afternoon were they able to test specifically for phosphine.

“We ended up doing an across-the-board air quality testing, which doesn’t specifically earmark this ... because we didn’t know what it was,” he said. “(Monday) we were able to calibrate our machines to test for that specifically.”

Police and fire officials made plans to evacuate the entire building shortly after the incident. However, Sunday afternoon air quality testing showed the building’s air quality posed no longer posed a public threat. Tenants were allowed to return to their apartments at approximately 6:30 p.m.

At the apartment building Monday afternoon, residents were looking for information on what happened.

“(I) just want to know what was spilt so that we have a clue what we may or may not be inhaling,” said Calvin Meier, a resident from another floor that didn’t say he was being evacuated. “Really, I don’t know what happened. That’s the problem.”

“I was going to work nights, so when I was going to come out there was ... police,” said Alex Kampatibe, a resident on the third floor. “Our building was big, so it (the evacuation) didn’t happen to the other side.”

“There are lots of long term tenants (that) don’t have a problem,” said the building’s property manager, Sandy Mijajlovic. “Just everybody’s praying for the kids, that’s all.”

According to Cameron, though the sudden death investigation is ongoing, current indications are that the death was accidental, and no further information is available.

“We’re still in the very early stages,” he said. “When we’re dealing with a death, more so when it’s an infant, we’ve got to make sure everything is covered.”

andrew.bates@sunmedia.ca

vincent.mcdermott@sunmedia.ca​