CO Alarms Avert Disaster for Family
43.0838293, -89.3753317
Incident Details
Engine 3 was dispatched to the report of a Carbon Monoxide (CO) alarm sounding on East Dayton Street. The crew was met by the occupant of the home, who stated that the CO alarm in the basement began sounding and about 5 minutes later, the alarm located on the first floor of the home also began to alarm.
The resident stated that there had been some work done on the water heater in the basement roughly one week ago that entailed repair of a broken exhaust pipe. The resident stated that he and his wife had just drawn up a bath for their baby, and estimated that he filled the bath with 25 gallons of hot water.
Engine 3’s crew turned on their Sensit monitor outside the home in fresh air and let it go through the proper start up procedure before making entry into the home. Once the crew entered the home, the monitor immediately got a reading of 30-40ppm of carbon monoxide. The crew backed out of the home, and each donned their SCBA (breathing apparatus) and then re-entered the house. They went to the basement and discovered readings between 95-100ppm. The crew once again backed out, and opened some doors and windows to begin the ventilation process. MG&E was requested to respond, and the crew also contacted the Hazardous Incident Team (HIT) leader.
MG&E arrived on location, and took their gas monitor into the basement, where they obtained a carbon monoxide reading directly from the water heater of 3,000ppm.
The MG&E technician asked the Engine 3 crew whether they had the means to ventilate the structure. Engine 3 then set up the RAM (Rapid Air Movement) power fan in the side door of the basement, and used it as a "smoke ejector" to ventilate the basement. MG&E shut off the gas leading to the water heater, disconnected the gas line from the water heater, capped it, and red tagged the water heater so as to not be used again.
In the meantime, Engine 3’s crew was able to successfully ventilate the basement back down to a reading of 0ppm on the both MG&E’s and Engine 3’s monitors.
The family at this address had a newborn infant. With the new baby, and the high CO alarm this evening—especially the alarm in the basement that was hit with 3,000ppm—the crew was concerned the family’s current alarms would no longer function properly. Because of these extenuating circumstances, Engine 3 called back to their station and had Medic 3 bring three new CO alarms from the recent delivery of alarms as part of the grant MFD received to supply them to people in need. Once delivered, the crew set to installing the new alarms.
With the CO levels back to 0, the water heater taken offline, and the new CO alarms installed & working properly in the home, Engine 3 returned in service.