14 hospitalized for carbon monoxide poisoning at Yale University

The city emergency operations director says a worker was found unconscious Wednesday outside a Yale building near campus.

Blood tests of a construction worker who collapsed Wednesday outside a building owned by Yale University led emergency crews to uncover potentially lethal levels of carbon monoxide inside. Another 13 people were hospitalized, but the discovery may have prevented a much larger catastrophe, officials said.

“There was a disaster averted here,” said Rick Fontana, New Haven’s emergency operations director. “You could have had a lot more sick or a lot more death had this gone on for a longer period of time.”

Emergency crews initially thought they were responding to a “regular medical call” Wednesday morning when they brought the collapsed unconscious man to the hospital, Fontana said. However, an hour-and-a-half later, the hospital informed them that the worker had extremely high levels of carbon monoxide in his bloodstream.

Crews then returned to the location and found 13 people at the building with elevated carbon monoxide levels and complaining of headaches. It was later determined that the construction workers had been using a propane-fueled saw to cut concrete inside the structure. Even though they were venting it, Fontana said the fumes were not exiting the building.

Of the 14 people who were hospitalized, nine were construction workers and five were members of Yale Security Department, which is located in the same facility, said a spokesperson for Mayor Justin Elicker.