Windsor, CO- Most homes have carbon monoxide detectors but residents hardly notice them.
Since they rarely sound off, the detectors are most ignored or forgotten about.
One Windsor family, however, found out recently that it’s nice to have them.
Scott Goff and his 17-year-old daughter, Koree Goff, were at home when the basement carbon monoxide detector went off in April.
I was sitting in my room when an alarm went off, Koree said.
I thought it was the fire alarm, but there wasn’t a fire anywhere. So, I went upstairs to get my dad and told him that an alarm was going off.
He said, ‘that’s a carbon monoxide detector, dummy.’
The two immediately left the house and called the fire department. They were not allowed back into their home that night.
Janine Lawson, Koree’s grandmother and a Windsor resident, feels strongly about the importance of owning a carbon monoxide detector.
I want everyone to remember when visiting with friends that don’t have a carbon monoxide detector to get up and get one, she said. You can’t afford to lose someone over a silly thing like that.
If we all did that it would save a lot of lives in Colorado, Lawson added. People are careless, I think everybody should do this. I certainly don’t want to lose my son or granddaughter.
Koree agreed.
Yeah, definitely, she said when asked about the importance of owning a detector. You can’t smell it or know that its there. It can kill you.
The Goffs owned two carbon monoxide detectors before the incident but now have five.
Lawson on the other hand, owned one carbon monoxide detector before the April incident but now she has a second one.
I got another one after just to make sure, she said.
The tragic story of 23-year-old University of Denver graduate student Lauren Johnson, a former Windsor resident who died in her Denver apartment from carbon monoxide poisoning in January, is part of the reason Lawson feels so strongly about carbon monoxide detectors.
Lawson appreciates the effort that Don Johnson, Lauren’s father, has put toward making carbon monoxide detectors more important in the household.
He is very vocal about this, she said. It’s also what I do now. If someone doesn’t have one, by the end of the day they will.
The last piece of advice Lawson has for residents is quite simple, too.
If someone doesn’t have one, she said, for crying out loud, go get one.