The Commercial Court was evacuated briefly Friday morning after employees arriving to work smelled fumes from a battery leak inside the building, officials said.
By 9 a.m., a fire truck had responded to the scene, and the section of Main Street in front of the court was cordoned off.
A few court employees stood on the sidewalk, some holding cloths over their noses and mouths, as two fire officers entered the building in gas masks.
They found that “one or two” batteries in the court’s information-technology room had “pretty much run their course” and started leaking a small amount of acid, Chief Fire Officer Zebalon McLean said.
The batteries, he said, are a back-up power source similar to car batteries but smaller.
They are designed simply to lose power when they need to be replaced, but “not every component is optimal,” so “swelling and leakage” can happen on occasion, Mr. McClean explained.
“That can produce some smells that are quite awful,” he said.
Mr. McClean commended court administrators for evacuating the building quickly. No one was hospitalised or treated for medical issues, he said.
After ascertaining the problem, the fire officers called government’s Department of Information Technology
“Once we found out that those guys were on the way and there was no more danger, we left,” Mr. McClean said.
The court was back open by noon.
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