CEO: High Legionella bacteria levels only in cooling systems

The buildings have since been cleaned and disinfected and students will return to class on Monday.

A suburban Chicago school district onWednesday evacuated three of its schoolsafter higher levels than normal of Legionella bacteria werefound in cooling towers. The schools were closed “out of an abundance of caution”. Nineteen of the district’s cooling towers were drained and flushed four times to recommended levels.

ABC affiliate WLS-TV reports that Eastview Middle School, Larking High School and the Educational Services Center was evacauted and then closed last Wednesday.

Gifford Street High School and Central Schools program students are moving to Elgin High School until we can get those students home. Special needs students were also being transported home.

The district added that it will begin to schedule testing before the school year starts, test and sanitize the cooling towers more often, and consult with an infectious disease physician during testing.

The building shutdowns follow Legionnaires’ outbreaks that killed a dozen people in New York City; 13 in Quincy, Illinois; and sickened scores of inmates at a California prison.

“We believe, and medical experts have arrived at, that scholars and team members were really at poor likelihood of plummeting poorly attributed the results among the pressure”, the district said.