Ogden, UT- Carbon monoxide kills about 500 people each year in the U.S. CO is emitted from home furnaces and hot water heaters and is typically released as exhaust outside. But one family who had a brush with death shares their story with FOX 13 viewers as a warning for all families.
The Streadbeck family experienced a scare this past August when two of their boys had seizures after a water heater exposed the family to a near fatal dose of carbon monoxide gas.
“This was 3:30 in the morning and we’d had a little CO dose ourselves. We were trying to put it all together…we sat down back on the couch with James not knowing what to do and my wife was on the phone with 911, and I said ‘tell them the other boy is doing it now to, bending his arms back, eyes rolling back, couldn’t get him to respond.’ As soon as I said that the people from 911 said ‘get out of the house,'” said Dave Streadbeck.
They were taken in for care and placed in hyperbaric chambers that speed up the bodies’ oxygen intake, decreasing long-term effects of CO poisoning.
“They reduce the cellular effects on the brain, the heart, the central nervous system, the damage that’s caused by CO affiliating with those tissues,” said Ogden Regional Hospital’s clinical director, Dr. Peter Clemens.
Experts remind everyone, especially this upcoming winter season when furnaces and heaters are at maximum use, to keep a carbon monoxide detector in every room.