Staff of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in downtown Mountain View were ordered to evacuate the Castro Street building Thursday morning due to a natural gas leak, according to a local fire official. No one was injured and the facility resumed business as usual just half an hour after the smell of gas was reported.

A Kaiser spokesman said a "filter" needed to be changed.

The Mountain View Fire Department was called at 8:27 a.m., Aug. 16, with reports that gas could be smelled throughout the facility, according to Jaime Garrett, a spokeswoman for the department.

When firefighters arrived, they too smelled the leak and quickly determined that it was coming from a boiler on the roof of the building, Garrett said. While they searched for the source of the smell they ordered everyone in the building to evacuate.

By 9 a.m., most if not all of the building had been evacuated, but the fire department had already stopped the leak and aired out the building, Garrett said.

"A filter that caused the odor to collect in the building was changed and the building was reopened after about 30 minutes, about 9 a.m.," Kaiser spokesman Karl Sonkin said. "At no point during that time were members or employees in danger. Since our clinics didn't open until 9 a.m. today, only a few members needed their appointments rescheduled."

Garrett said gas could be smelled on every floor and said she presumed that the smell was carried throughout the building via the facility's ventilation system.

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