Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Why Everyone Should Get A Carbon Monoxide Alarm

It was 7pm and we were finally sitting down to eat dinner. The kids were spooning up pasta and an alarm started beeping. I thought someone had left on the tv and asked Moni to go shut it off. She replied that it was "that dumb alarm thing upstairs."  The Carbon Monoxide alarm was beeping. We have had problems with it going off before- once was a false alarm, once because the battery was dead. I told her to go grab it for me. I checked the battery and pushed the test button and it stopped beeping. Hmmm. Oh well, I turned to the kids and we said a prayer to eat dinner. Just then Daniel came home and said "Why does the house smell like gas?"  None of us could smell it. We had been home all evening. He went around the house checking appliances and every pilot light was on. Then our neighbor Kim came knocking and asked why our house smelled of gas. She said she could smell it before we opened the door, it was so strong. She is taking EMT classes and they had just studied carbon monoxide poisoning. She told us that by the time you feel sick from it, it is very bad.  Daniel called the gas company, and we went to go hang out at Kim's house.  Within a few minutes of breathing fresh air, I started to feel dizzy and my head started hurting.  All the kids felt fine as we sat and watched a movie cuddled on Kim's couch.  The gas guy showed up with multiple gadgets and checked everything out.   I guess while cooking dinner, the pilot light on my 1950 oven had gone out and slowly filled the house with gas.  Because we were sitting in it, we were desensitized to the smell. It wasn't until breathing in fresh air could I even smell it in the house.  We were able to air out the house and every one went to bed last night, a bit more grateful for the safety alarms that we have.

2 comments:

  1. Holy Cow!! That's nuts. Good thing Dan came home late! Glad you're all okay.

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  2. wow! So glad that Dan came home! That is scary.

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