Circle Pines, Minnesota — Deputies on Thursday used an unlikely tool inside a Twin Cities sports arena to alleviate a dangerous ammonia leak.
The Anoka County Sheriff’s Office said deputies were called to the Centennial Sports Arena in Circle Pines after the ice surface cooling system failed and an ammonia leak occurred inside the arena.
“Ammonia levels within the rink were 400 ppm (safe exposure limit is 35 ppm within 15 minutes),” the sheriff’s office wrote in a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter).
Members of the Spring Lake Park Fire Department in Blaine, Mounds View, rushed to the scene, but were faced with a major dilemma. If the ice cannot be repaired within a few hours, it will melt and it will take two weeks for the ice to repair. — has become a huge headache for all the local hockey teams that rely on it.
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And even if all the fans from each local division were in the arena, it probably wouldn’t be enough to beat the clock.
Thankfully, someone came up with an ACSO airboat that was brought to the arena and effectively ventilated the building in time.
“Thank you to the Spring Lake Park, Blaine, and Mounds View Fire Departments for keeping our buildings safe and creatively problem-solving!” the sheriff’s office wrote.
It took “several five-minute blasts of air” from the airboat to bring the ammonia levels down to safe levels.
The 31-year-old arena is the first in the Twin Cities to feature an Olympic-sized ice surface and underwent an $8.5 million renovation in 2019.