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Alert Brockton mom saves self, children
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Alert Brockton mom saves self, children
By Maureen Boyle, Enterprise staff writer
BROCKTON — Seven people — including three children — are alive today thanks to carbon monoxide detectors, fire officials say.
The mother of three children, aged 8, 6 and nine months old, called firefighters shortly before 8:30 p.m. Sunday after the detector in her first-floor apartment on Williams Court, off Court Street, kept going off.
"Her detector was going off intermittently but when the baby got sick and vomited, she made the call," Deputy Fire Chief Timothy Murphy said.
When firefighters arrived, they discovered carbon monoxide levels of 100 parts per million — more than 10 times the normal levels of 7 to 8 per million, he said.
The woman and her three children were taken to Brockton Hospital for evaluation and given oxygen. Tenants on the second floor were also evacuated, he said.
Officials inspected the house and discovered someone who had installed a water heater earlier in the day failed to reconnect one of the smoke pipes, he said.
As a result, the carbon monoxide wound up getting pushed through the forced hot air heating system in the house, he said.
Murphy said if there hadn't been detectors in the home, tragedy could have resulted.
"Because carbon monoxide is odorless and colorless, no one even knows it is there," he said. "If this had happened after they went to bed, it could have been tragic."
The incident Sunday comes just days before a state law mandating all residents be equipped with carbon monoxide detectors as of March 31.
The detectors must be on all all habitable floors of a home, including bsements that are used as a bedroom or family room. Also, any any room either above or next to an attached garage must have a CO monitor installed. The law — called "Nicole's Law" — was prompted by the death of 7-year-old Nicole Garofalo of Plymouth, who died in 2004 after a snowdrift blocked an exhaust vent from her family's propane-fired boiler, filling the home carbon monoxide.
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