The crisis was over, as of 11:05 this morning.
Culver City has been spared a potential disaster, officials announced.
In decommissioning the temporarily (?) condemned Culver City Ice Arena, it was reported that the full complement of ammonia, that supposedly has been worrying City Hall darned near sick for a month, has been removed.
Exactly what this means is — and will remain — unclear for at least awhile.
As sure as St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland, a company known as Hill Brothers, drove the Culver City equivalent of snakes, a bundle of ammonia, out of this community.
Inquiring minds want to know this afternoon, will City Hall nominate the Hill boys for sainthood?
With a degree of egregiousness perhaps never before witnessed in this community, city officials have been overtly wringing their hands over ammonia they freely and frequently labeled a “public health hazard.”
The vital ingredient to operating the 52-year-old rink never has leaked. It might, they said, without doing much about quelling the looming tragedy.
City officials worried that the ammonia might find an opening in its pipes home someday. Could blow 600 years from now, even 500 years. Being risk-averse types, they must have reasoned, who wants to take that chance? No sense in standing around a few centuries
If the ammonia ever does leak, it could make people sick, if not worse.
City Hall was so assiduously worrying about Culver City being blown to smithereens in the 27th century that every day for the past 5½ weeks, gosh darn, they have forgotten to warn apartment dwellers a feet away that their vulnerable bodies, not to mention belongings, could be blown to smithereens, wherever smithereens is.
