Kenai Fire Marshall Tommy Carver says on Tuesday morning he and his teenage children were sleeping as usual when their carbon monoxide alarm woke them at 1:00 am.
Carver: “So naturally I thought it was a false alarm which will sometimes happen with smoke alarms and such, you’ll get nuisance alarms. When I went out into the hallway and looked at it it was showing high levels.”
The Carver’s alarm was reading carbon monoxide levels at somewhere around 200 parts per million.
Prolonged levels of the odorless gas at 70 ppm and above can cause headaches and other symptoms. Sustained concentrations above 150 to 200 ppm can cause disorientation, unconsciousness, and even death.
Carver says he immediately vented his house and tracked the leak to his boiler.
Carver: “Really this whole thing was my fault because I didn’t service my boiler properly like I should. You’re supposed to get them looked at once a year and it had slipped my mind, I didn’t do that. It had gotten a little bit gunked up in the burn chamber and started to have incomplete combustion which was kicking the exhaust right back into the garage which then led into the house.”
He says that the carbon monoxide detector waking his family up six hours before their morning alarms would have gone off is the reason that they are alive.
Carver says if community members did not change their batteries in smoke and carbon monoxide alarms at Daylight Saving Time, they should do that now whether the batteries are low or not.