Posted on 02/22/2014 8:51:41 PM PST by BenLurkin
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – One person is dead and at least two dozen others were rushed to area hospitals for apparent carbon monoxide poisoning at a mall on Long Island Saturday evening.
As CBS 2′s Hazel Sanchez reported, police said 55-year-old Steven Nelson, the manager of the Legal Sea Foods restaurant located at the Walt Whitman Shops in Huntington Station, was killed by the odorless gas.
total of 28 people were also rushed to area hospitals and treated for elevated levels of carbon monoxide, 1010 WINS reported.
“The original call was that a woman had fallen and had a head injury. That’s possibly as a result of the carbon monoxide. That ultimately was not the person who died. That was someone else. But that’s what started the response of the emergency personel,” Suffolk County Police Lt. Jack Fitzpatrick told Sanchez.
A spokesperson for Huntington Hospital said 10 of those sickened were rushed there and that others were triaged at the scene, 1010 WINS reported.
Fitzpatrick said four of those affected were ambulatory workers and three were police officers who responded to the scene, WCBS 880′s Sophia Hall reported.
Police said the leak originated in the basement of Panera Bread, possibly due to a faulty heating system, Sanchez reported.
The Panera Bread as well as the neighboring Cheesecake Factory were evacuated as a precaution.
Kathy Sella and Ashley Harper were at the Cheesecake Factory when the wait staff told the entire restaurant to get out, Sanchez reported.
“We were sitting at the bar, we are having a glass of wine. And then somebody came up to us – I think it was one of the waitresses – and she said that ‘you had to leave,’” Sella said.
“She’s like everyone has to evacuate the building and we’re like what’s the matter and she says there’s a gas leak,” Harper added.
Most of those sickened have since been treated and released. Those who remain hospitalized are expect to make a full recovery.
are always open and no heating is used?
What I have is a high quality detector that measures trace elements in addition to being an alarm. These devices are recommended to be replaced every 5(?) or so and rather than throw them out, I just buy a new one but put new batteries in and keep the old ones as well .....and put it in a different part of the house. I'm up to 5 of them and even if they don't work as well as new, I always have my latest one that should be working properly.
CO and CO2 are different gases.
In 2009, several tour buses parked close to ventilation shaft at an ice arena (during a major tournament) in Illinois caused an evacuation and sent several individuals to a hospital
I think the important thing is not to be the most susceptible. Let someone else be the canary in that coal mine. I just replaced my CO detectors (they were five years old). CO is one of those things I do worry about, and about which I can do something.
There was a guy on the internet that used to sell ampules of CO that you would break open and put in a plastic bad with your CO detector to test it. I can't find them anymore, now I have to depend on the age of the device.
Link: I was officiating a game then. I thought I was coming down with the flu in the worst way.
CO can be highly insidious as far as how it builds up. Here’s one frightening example of how easily this can occur. In recent years there has been a big move to have houses more and more airtight to reduce energy costs. I believe that almost all new gas furnaces have a dedicated air supply pipe that goes to the outdoors to bring in combustion air (this isn’t the case everywhere but I believe it is with all new furnaces where I live)… so furnaces usually aren’t the problem. However, the furnace isn’t the only combustion air source in the house…. one device which is often overlooked but typically should be of far greater concern is the water heater. If a gas water heater is used that is naturally vented (as opposed to having a fan to discharge the flue gases, there is a very real likelihood that the flue gas could end up in the house if conditions change in the house that cause the indoor air pressure to drop below outdoor ambient. How could that happen? Very easily….. take a house that has been built quite airtight and now turn on some equipment that exhausts air. A few years ago, I bought a high powered hood arrangement for my kitchen that has a fan on that exhausts air at the rate of 350 cubic feet per minute. Switch that on and switch on a few bathroom exhaust fans… and for good measure, do some vacuuming with a central vac unit that is located and exhausting into the garage. All of a sudden, you might find that your house has gone quite negative and if that naturally aspirated gas fired water heater comes on at that time, it very likely will be discharging its fumes into the indoor space because it can’t vent against the air that is entering your house via the gas water heater flue pipe. If this happens to coincide with your teenage daughter having an hour long shower and someone doing a pile of laundry, that water heater could be on for a very long time… There are plenty of documented cases where this is the exact mechanism where people living in their houses have been poisoned.
Hockey arenas are notorious for CO... when it happens, it is often because something wasn't quite tuned up right on the engine of the gas powered surfacing machine. This is not all that uncommon.
All of these types of cases in conjunction withe the one I mentioned in my previous post about houses is all the more reason to always have a portable CO detector on oneself. If you send your kids over to your neighbour's house, how do you know that they don't have a CO problem? Two of the engineers that work for me were doing some testing in a steel plant just two weeks ago and somebody had inadvertently left a test port open on a steel furnace exhaust duct. Flue gas was being pumped out of it and fortunately, there were CO alarms nearby that were triggered. It can happen so easily and as already mentioned here, sometimes the person in the vicinity never knows anything other than she/he seems to inexplicable have come down with flu symptoms. One very big danger is the cockpit of small aircraft... any leakage in the exhaust system will find its way into the cabin. All these are reasons why you must have a portable CO detector on you.
I’m well aware of CO2’s ability to suffocate; the topic under discussion was CO. I think the government has lots easier ways to kill large numbers of people that CO2 suffocation.
Where did you get these tiny CO detectors?
I never heard of them.
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The company that makes the one I was talking about in an earlier post is called KWJ Engineering out of California... they make a number of products but the small CO detector is called the Pocket CO. I am not aware of another company that makes a comparable product... at least not one that gives trace readings. If you do an Ixquick on them, you can find it real fast. However, if you have a problem, just send me a private message... I can even give you the name of the individual who I'm dealing with there.
I found KWJ’s website and also that of another company that sells the ones KWJ manufactures.
Information re:KWJ in the manual at following site.
http://www.pilotshop.com/catalog/pspages/co300.php?gclid=CL6vvJmY47wCFQIOOgodC
Thanks so much for your helpfulness.
M
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