Monday, December 13, 2010

A quick note on cold weather safety and carbon monoxide detectors…


I just read this story about the death of a family here in Missouri. 

Four people were found dead in their home from apparent carbon monoxide poisoning.

This tragedy serves as a reminder that every home needs to have a carbon monoxide detector.

And with that reminder comes the harsh reality that carbon monoxide detectors aren’t cheap…but they are necessary.

I’m sensitive to this because my family had a carbon monoxide scare a couple of years ago and the only reason we were alerted was because my sister scored a detector in response to a colleague’s scare.

Our house had not been rehabbed to vent properly and carbon monoxide built up as a result.  We owe a lot to the fact that our house is old and drafty or we’d likely have had a tragedy of our own - the detector went off almost as soon as my sister took it out of the box.

We were lucky.

Many are not.

If you’re giving gifts this holiday season please consider giving new homeowners carbon monoxide detectors...and you can also drop them into gift collection boxes. 

If you don’t have a carbon monoxide detector in your house I urge you to get one.

The weather is dangerously cold…many people are turning on the heat for the first time since last year…and furnaces break or money gets tight so we don’t get them serviced and so on and so forth.

Sigh.

Okay, I'm done.

Be safe and be warm.

4 comments:

Colonel de Guerlass said...

Well, having CO detectors needs access to electricity; and half of carbon monoxyde poisoning might come from people who tried to get some heath, while their main supply was cutted (from lack of payment or from cable breakage..)

Shark-Fu said...

Good point!

Our CO detector requires electricity, but there are other models that operate off of batteries.

Rileysdtr said...

Combo smoke/CO detector that runs on one battery can be found at virtually any hardware store for a reasonable price. Many fire depts (especially in urban areas) will hand them out.

Miss Trudy said...

Tragedy. I guess one of the good things of currently living in Central America is that there is no central heating in most buildings, so one deals with the cold with pretty modern and safe space heaters and wearing lots of chunky knits. Of course, it doesn't freeze and snow here like it does in Missouri, but still. Hope you are recovering well, Shark Fu. Hugs.

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