What Warning of Carbon Monoxide without an Alarm?

FAQ: What Warning of Carbon Monoxide without an Alarm will a person have to evacuate?

Short Answer: Not enough because the typical warning signs are physical symptoms that can easily be confused with illnesses, like the flu. Only when multiple people get sick contemporaneously is the danger likely to be identified.

What Warning of Carbon Monoxide without an Alarm? Not enough, as the physical warning signs of carbon monoxide intoxication mimic that of common every day illnesses and many people don’t get sick at once, the poisoning can go on for a long time, resulting in repeated poisonings or death.

From our firms video podcast on FAQ’s between Attorney Gordon Johnson and Attorney Griffith Winthrop:

Griff Winthrop: [00:26:10] We haven’t covered this yet and a lot of people watching this probably already know this. But I think it bears mentioning. You can’t smell carbon monoxide. You can’t see carbon monoxide, you can’t taste carbon monoxide. So you don’t know you’re being exposed to it. That’s why they call it the silent killer. Because you have no idea what’s happening to you when it’s happening. And the other impact is, of course, your brain is being choked from oxygen, so you’re already being unreasonable and making bad decisions. It’s a horrible combination. Very dangerous.

Gordon Johnson: [00:26:42] We have a case where middle of the night child stumbles to the bathroom, throws up, the parent is woken up by the child going to the bathroom, and realizes that the child is very sick, that she’s very sick, and tries to call 911. Does she succeed?

Griff Winthrop: [00:27:07] No. And that’s a great illustration of the point I just made. Her brain was so addled by lack of oxygen from the carbon monoxide poisoning that she couldn’t even tell the 911 operator what her address was. She was just incoherent on the phone, and the only thing that saved her was she was able to call her cousin that she said enough words that the cousin realized that there was something going on, and they got in there and saved these people.

Gordon Johnson: [00:27:34] The cousin called 911, but interestingly, the cousin was a was a mile or two away. Another cousin was a few blocks away. So the second cousin who’s notified of the event gets in the house and drags everybody out and has all but one of the people out of the house by the time the EMTs get there, had not our client made that second phone call, everybody in that house would have died.

Griff Winthrop: [00:28:03] Yeah. The the ambient carbon monoxide was well over 550 parts per million up in the bedrooms where they were sleeping, which was two floors away from the basement where the furnace was. It is. You’re absolutely right. Had she not made that second call, they all would have died.