Thousands mourn Ottawa student killed in blast
Posted May 27, 2011 1:11 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A Grade 12 student killed in a freak explosion at an Ottawa high school was being mourned Friday by thousands of fellow students, teachers and parents.
By midday Friday, more than 12,000 people had joined a Facebook memorial page to Eric Leighton, who died in hospital late Thursday after being critically injured in shop class when a empty 55-gallon oil drum ignited and blew up.
Their posts ranged from the simple condolences of strangers touched by Leighton’s untimely death to the deeply personal eulogies of friends and family.
“My heart broke last night when I saw you. My heart broke when you were gone. My heart broke when seeing our family feel so much loss. My heart smiled when I saw how many people you touched who came out last night to say goodbye,” wrote Perry Brown.
“You weren’t just a cousin, but a friend. RIP Eric :'(“
But with the grieving came concern and anxiety from parents with their own school-aged children. There were questions about how such an accident could have occurred in the first place.
Those questions won’t be answered until the city Fire Marshal’s Office finishes its investigation.
In the meantime, the Canada Safety Council is telling parents not to worry about sending their kids to school.
“Schools are about 99.9 per cent safe,” spokeswoman Valerie Powell said.
“There’s a lot of regulations with them, and they do follow all the safety procedures that you need to. This event that happened in Ottawa is just really unfortunate. It is an isolated incident, and you don’t hear of this happening very often.”
Police say students and a 33-year-old teacher at Mother Teresa Catholic High School in the city’s southwest end were apparently building barbecues in the auto shop when vapours from an empty drum ignited and blew up.
It is believed the drum contained peppermint oil, but that is still under investigation.
Richard Smythe, a forensic scientist and analytical chemist who has investigated fires and explosions, said peppermint oil is an organic liquid that can give off vapour.
Smythe speculated that if a steel drum contained a bit of oil vapour and some oxygen, the mix would be just enough to create an explosion if it was ignited. The students at the school were building barbecues, and might possibly have been trying to cut into drums with torches or saws.
“If that drum was left, and only a bit of vapour came off and it mixed with the air inside, you have a potential bomb,” said Smythe, who stressed he did not have all the details of the accident.
“Because when you put the torch to that metal drum and sparks get inside, there’s already a pre-mixed mixture of fuel and oxygen, and it’s in a steel drum — you’ve got a bomb.”
It’s not known if this was the first time students at the school had worked with drums of peppermint oil. The Ottawa Catholic School Board didn’t immediately return requests for comment.
Ontario’s Ministry of Education, meanwhile, was looking into whether other schools in the province use similar types of drums in shop classes.
