A medic woke up during the night with diarrhea and low and behold, the station was full of carbon monoxide. The heater was cycling on and off to try and get rid of humidity and some how pumped the building full of CO. The CO detector was designed to chirp at 40ppm, but not to go into alarm until 400ppm. The alarm was chirping when the medic woke up, so it was obviously somewhere in that range. The entire shift (5 personnel) ended up being transported to the hospital to be checked out.
LESSONS LEARNED:
Just because we are emergency personnel, doesn’t mean we are immune to emergencies! Make sure you have working detectors in your station and make sure they are set at good levels! My department had a CO incident 6-8 months ago as well. The CO alarm at Station 1 was sounding, so the dorm resident had the FD duty officer come check it out. Sure enough, CO levels were high. It was due to a combination of an ambulance left running and heater issues. After this incident, CO detectors were purchased and placed in all 4 of our stations.
