A HIGHLAND swimming pool was evacuated following a chemical spillage, less than a week after a more serious leak at a public pool in Fife left 19 people with breathing difficulties.
Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) was called to attend the chemical incident at the swimming pool in Wick on Monday afternoon.
Operations Control received the call at 3.47pm reporting a small chemical spillage within the plant room of the public swimming pool in the Caithness town.
Two appliances from Wick were sent to the scene. The operators High Life Highland evacuated 29 members of the public people from the premises as a precaution, of which 24 were children.
The surrounding streets were closed off and crews in breathing apparatus used a spill kit to clear the spillage and secure the chemical in an external compound. The incident was dealt with by 5.33pm.
Mark Loynd, SFRS Incident Commander, Group Manager, said: “The quantity of spilled chemical was relatively small and at no time was there any risk to anyone in the vicinity. High Life Highland staff did an excellent job evacuating the pool and the premises.
"No-one was injured and no one required medical attention. Our crews quickly contained the substance so there was no environmental risk.”
The "major incident" at the pool in East Sands leisure centre in St Andrews last week took longer to tackle, with the facility not reopening for two days. There were 13 fire appliances at the scene at one point with the Scottish Ambulance Service talking of "multiple casualties".
Members of the public affected included children between the ages of two and 12. They were taken to Ninewells Hospital in Dundee. But following an inspection by the Health and Safety Executive, it reopened last Thursday.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here