Posted on 01/10/2024 2:32:18 PM PST by nickcarraway
A South Carolina couple was found dead in their house over the weekend after police said the home heater reached 1,000 degrees, according to a police report.
Spartanburg County Coroner Rusty Clevenger said Monday officials were still investigating the deaths of the man and woman.
The names of the victims were not released.
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In a report from the Spartanburg Police Department, police said they and medics were called just after 6 p.m. Saturday to the home on Woodview Avenue by the family to make a welfare check, since they had not seen their parents since Wednesday.
When officers arrived, they said all doors were locked, but the window leading into the victims' bedroom bedroom was unsecure, the report said.
They removed the screen to the window and looked into the bedroom saw the couple was dead, according to the report.
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Medics pulled themselves through the window to unlock the front door.
Once inside, police noticed the residence was "extremely hot."
In the bedroom, the man was found laying on the bed unclothed, facing upwards, police said.
They said the woman was at the side of the bed, slouched in a chair and was clothed.
Police said they did not observe any signs of a struggle or any signs of foul play.
The Spartanburg Fire Department was called to check for signs of carbon monoxide poisoning, but when they arrived they said they found none.
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Police said the body temperatures of the victims measured by medics with a device that went up to 106 degrees, and both victims exceeded that reading.
Family members told police they were at the home last Wednesday, helping their parents with their heater, saying the gas heater and gas hot water heater both were out and the home was getting too cold, according to the report.
The family told police they noticed the pilot light on the hot water heater was out.
They said they started "fiddling" with it, moving a wire, and the pilot light turned on.
Once the light came back on they left the home, police said.
The report said, after a few days of not hearing from their parents they became concerned.
The family said the couple had several health issues and both were not easily mobile, saying the man fell recently and the woman had undergone hip surgery, according to the report.
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Fire officials who measured the interior temperature told police the home exceeded 120 degrees and those readings were after the home was open to the cold weather for about 20 minutes, the report said.
They then checked the basement of the home where the heater and hot water heater were located.
According to the report, one firefighter said "the heater was so hot it looked as if the basement was currently on fire."
Once they realized it was not physically on fire they deactivated the heater.
"They then measured the temperature of the heater itself and measured it at over 1000 degrees," the report said.
Firefighters continued airing out the home due to the strong odor of natural gas.
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Before leaving the scene, the responding officer noticed the thermometer in the home started working again.
"Upon looking at it I stated the residence was at 96 degrees," the responding officer reported. "It read this temperature after the house was been open for around two and a half hours."
No other information about the investigation was immediately released by the police department and the coroner's office.
Bet it was murder.
1,000 degrees!?
I don’t think so…
I believe it will ignite at approximately 451 degrees. Hence the novels title. However it actually burns much hotter.
“”””Family members told police they were at the home last Wednesday, helping their parents with their heater, saying the gas heater and gas hot water heater both were out and the home was getting too cold, according to the report.
The family told police they noticed the pilot light on the hot water heater was out.
They said they started “fiddling” with it, moving a wire, and the pilot light turned on.
Once the light came back on they left the home, police said.””””
Some people are going to feel badly about this.
“...it’s a smoker!”
Probably closer to a blast furnace for smelting.
wy69
That was a kiln.
Yes. I’m thinking that the thermostat was jacked way up when the heat wasn’t working and not turned back down when the heat restarted. However, it almost sounds like the heating system was hot wired around the thermostat and any safety switch as well. I find it strange that the family didn’t check on their parents themselves, rather than reporting concern to the government officials, but maybe they didn’t live in the same town or something.
AI is Artificial. But it is not Intelligence.
That title is included in Top 10 Most Boring Books I Ever Tried 2 Finish.
Entertaining for thee, but not for me
“They said they started “fiddling” with it, moving a wire, and the pilot light turned on.”
That’s how it is possible. The family probably moved a thermocouple that is meant to detect the temperature so the device knows when to automatically shut off. Once they disabled that, apparently there was no failsafe to stop the heater from just going constantly.
Those pilot lights on water heaters can get hot. /s
Paper burns at less than half that,
= = =
Using Degrees F, with it’s zero.
Different when you convert to absolute.
Is that a heater or a kiln? - or a coal-fired brick pizza oven? - those go up to 1500 degrees.
Yep, everyone thinks they’re a pipe fitter.
Well if the thermostat never tells the heater to stop heating, gas will continue to burn, and the heat exchanger metal will continue to get hotter... its pretty safe to say that the heat would continue to heat up the metal housing of the furnace at and above the actual burners and that that metal would eventually glow red hot... looks like this thing was running non stop for days, really not hard to imagine that it heated itself up that high.
Now, that’s the temperature of the furnace itself, not the temperature of the house... however if the furnace was running non stop It would not take too long even in cold weather situation for the entire house to heat up to intolerable temperatures....
However, humans tend to realize this and will open a window or wake up and go outside or something not just sit in unbearable hot temps until they get cooked to death.
First instinct would assume that they had a carbon monoxide leak and they died in their sleep and then the bodies got baked, but they claim that was not the issue... so it is curious that they didn’t leave the home, or open a window, or something rather than just sit in heat and die.
They weren’t talking kelvin.
Very well explained!
The only other thing I could think of, and its purely conjecture as I don’t know the math on this... but if the heat exchanger did have a crack or small hole in it, that initially it was leaking CO into the home, and they succumbed to the CO but the excessive heats this thing went up to actually caused enough expansion of the metal that it sealed itself and stopped leaking, so by the time the authorities arrived days later, the furnace was no longer actively leaking CO... but that’s really really a stretch.. I don’t think a pinhole or tiny crack, that could “self heal” due to thermal expansion is going to leak enough CO to cause death... need to get up to about 150-200 PPM CO2 to cause death.
If it was CO the autopsy should reveal it.
I am just really really hard pressed to believe 2 ambulant people would just lie in excessive heat until they passed out from it, and eventually died from it. The fact the father was found naked and lying in bed without covers does tend to point to a fact he may have been trying to just endure the heat.. but I just don’t know.
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