(Okoboji)– The Arnolds Park-Okoboji Fire Department was busy late this (Tues.) morning. Chief Chris Yungbluth tells KUOO news they responded to two calls simultaneously. He says the first one was to a seasonal residence where an alarm was going off. Yungbluth says it turned out to be a false alarm. While they were there, Yungbluth says a crew had to divert to another call for service…
“While they were still working on that scene we got called out to United Community Bank in Okoboji for a smell or odor of gas. They did a great job of getting their employees evacuated out. All of the processes that they have to do in a bank to be able to close it out and make it so that their stuff is secure and their people are secure as well. Once we got there and completed that investigation we determined that it was actually the exhaust pipe on their furnace that came loose creating the odor in the building. We were able to re-secure that and shut the furnace off for now until they could get a plumber to take a look at it and they were opening back up and hoping for the arrival of the plumber shortly but they did keep going with business for the day.”
Yungbluth says an odor of natural gas is what alerted staff of the problem…
“Unless a furnace would happen to be 100 percent efficient which very few are, whenever they run there’s still raw gas that runs through the exhaust and that was what they were actually picking up on was the odor of the raw gas coming out the exhaust of the furnace and then filtering down from the attic space where the furnace was located.”
Firefighters were at each location about 20 minutes.
