Staunton, VA – For the third time in recent weeks, the Staunton Walmart was evacuated for fumes.
Public safety officials emptied the store of customers Tuesday morning and were testing the air inside the location off U.S. 250.
An employee who answered the phone at 9:15 a.m. confirmed the store was evacuated.
Police scanner traffic indicated that the public was being let back in a few minutes later.
The store was first beset with fume or odor problems Oct. 19, a busy Saturday shopping day.
Capt. Brian Butler of the Staunton Fire Department said a moderate level of carbon monoxide was detected inside the store that first time. He said firefighters suspect the odor might have come from generators on the roof, where work was being done. Butler said it is suspected that the generators were too close to the store’s intake systems, which could have sucked in the exhaust and spread carbon monoxide throughout most of the building.
We’re not 100 percent sure that was the cause, he said.
The generators were shut down and moved. The building was ventilated and carbon monoxide levels soon dropped, Butler said.
But crews were back again two days later, again evacuating the building.
The second time, they said the cause was a propane-powered floor buffer, not the roof generators. They suspect that a floor buffer was the cause this time also.