When ELi spoke to Lieutenant Newman, he said that after leaving your residence, you should immediately call 911. Everyone else is still sitting at their desk? Let them laugh at you because you will probably be alive either way. Photo courtesy of Brian and Mary Ellen Elliott.Brian Elliott, the father of ELi’s Managing Editor Emily Joan Elliott, enjoying retirement in North Carolina with his grandpup, Dunkin.Īnd, over and over from dad, I heard, “Get the heck out when alarms go off.” On the fortieth floor of an office building? Better start moving. When I went to college, I received links to YouTube videos that showed the deadly fires that resulted from leaving your charging laptop on your bed. Growing up, I repeatedly heard how dangerous candles were.
I knew to get out of our home because my dad was the assistant chief operating engineer and life safety director for a large office building in New York City. If you stay and the detector was right, you may never learn that you were wrong. You purchased a carbon monoxide detector to alert you that it is present, so you might as well listen to it by leaving your home immediately. Your carbon monoxide detector going off most likely means you have a buildup of carbon monoxide in your home. It would have been helpful to have been on the same page before this happened instead of hashing out the details in the moment of crisis. No experiment had been conducted, no data collected, and frankly, it wasn’t the time to stick around to find out. I wholly trust that he is way more knowledgeable than me with mechanics and engineering, but I know enough about the scientific method to realize this was an unproven hypothesis.
CARBON MONOXIDE DETECTOR BEEPING WINDOWS
He recommended opening the windows and turning off the furnace. My boyfriend is an engineer and felt pretty confident that he knew what was going on: something about a vent, the drop in temperature, the density of the air, something, something, something. You should also let everyone in your household know that the plan is to evacuate when you hear that alarm go off. Our failure to service our furnace meant that we let it turn into a killing machine. If we had done this in our household, we might have realized that parts of our furnace were rusted away, allowing for carbon monoxide to enter the airstream. If something is malfunctioning or the ventilation is faulty, the technician servicing the equipment will let you know. Lieutenant John Newman of the East Lansing Fire Department also recommends having your furnace and water heater serviced before turning on the furnace for the first time each year. I’ll admit that I don’t always remember to do that every six months, but I saw the batteries in the store around the end of daylight savings time and bought them.Įmily Joan Elliott for ELiA carbon monoxide detector in the home of ELi’s Managing Editor, Emily Joan Elliott.
Just the weekend before our CO detector went off, we had switched out the batteries of our smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Again, you cannot see it, taste it, or smell it.Ĭarbon monoxide is more likely to kill in the colder months when we are more likely to use things like fireplaces, furnaces, and water heaters, which produce carbon monoxide, and less likely to ventilate our homes by opening windows.ĮLi brings you some advice on how you might prepare for and handle a similar event in your household.Īn ounce of prevention is worth your life. Natural gas is obviously a concern, but carbon monoxide is so deadly specifically because there’s no way – besides a detector – for you to know that it is there. If you think you smell gas, that would be the odor added purposefully to the natural gas coming to your home through gas lines. Carbon monoxide is called the silent killer because you cannot see it, taste it, or smell it.
My boyfriend and I are alive and well, but carbon monoxide poisoning is no joke. Our carbon monoxide detector was going off. when I faintly heard a beep from downstairs. This public service announcement is coming to you today from ELi because this happened to me early last Sunday morning. Actually, the only butts are those of you and your love ones leaving your home. If your carbon monoxide detector starts beeping, you need to evacuate your home or workplace immediately.
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