Posted on 06/14/2013 5:33:20 PM PDT by grundle
Back in April, an elderly couple died while staying in a Best Western motel in North Carolina. The local medical examiner couldn’t find a clear cause of death. The motel continued renting the room to others until last week, when an 11-year-old boy died and his mother was rushed to the hospital. The cause? Carbon monoxide poisoning from the pool heater.
Here’s the galling part: while waiting for toxicology results, motel management just kept renting out the room to other guests. If management had some something wacky like hold off on renting that room until the results came back, maybe no one else would have died. The Charlotte Observer, hometown newspaper of the 11-year-old, reporters learned that in other jurisdictions, blood tests for carbon monoxide poisoning come back in a matter of hours, not weeks.
The room in question happens to be right over the motel’s mechanical room. Carbon monoxide, a colorless, odorless, deadly gas, seeped into the room through either the air conditioner or the gas fireplace vents. Officials believe that the gas came from the pool heater. Fire codes dictate that new houses built in North Carolina need carbon monoxide detectors, but they’re not required in motels. No staff from the medical examiner’s office visited the scene in April, and local emergency responders don’t carry equipment to detect carbon monoxide.
Blood test results would have showed that the elderly couple in April died of carbon monoxide poisoning. They were kicking off a three-week vacation, but died within hours of each other instead. The family didn’t believe that both parents, who were active and in good health, died of abrupt and simultaneous heart attacks. “Do you know how mad I am right now? Why are they still renting out this room?” their son asked reporters after learning about the child’s death in the same room.
If you happen to have stayed in Room 225 of the Best Western Plus Blue Ridge Plaza in Boone, N.C., please contact police at 828-268-6900.
This is the reason for building codes and Master Plumbers.
I hope the fool in AR that had his Brother-in-law hook their’s up at a local motel in hopes of saving on the estimate reads this!
YES, a couple in good health died unexpectedly.
2. They were told their customers died of heart attacks. Heart attacks are not transmissible.
WOW you just contradicted yourself "Heart attacks are not transmissible". Under your theory it's only transmissible between husband and wife so nothing to investigate. ROFLMAO!
3. But you are ready to commit murder for what was not even a mistake but just a confluence of circumstances.
Confluence of circumstances? Interesting comment. Somehow it all coalesce to create the result? OK... but WRONG. We have the facts and you are flat out wrong but hey you gained 10 days of room rent and left the light on for next guest. How nice of you.
4. Perhaps it is time to have your moral compass checked.
Moral Compass checked? Come on, you are one willing to keep renting out the room without all the facts. Heart Attacks were only assumption not the facts. Three other guest unexpectedly vomit with headaches and management notified. And you call out moral compass on others.
The world "common" means it occurs frequently. Frequently generally means more than once or twice a year in a population of 300m people. It also means that this type of death is universally known. For instance, motel pool drownings are common, and occur on a monthly basis. A simple Google search unearthed a large number of distinct listings for motel pool drownings, whereas a similar search for motel pool heater deaths unearthed the same incidents over and over.
Wow! I never realized that you gave your health history to the hotel.
WOW you just contradicted yourself "Heart attacks are not transmissible". Under your theory it's only transmissible between husband and wife so nothing to investigate. ROFLMAO!
I am going to assume that you are having a bit of a reading comprehension problem. I never said they were transmissible between husbands and wives. That delusion is yours.
Confluence of circumstances? Interesting comment. Somehow it all coalesce to create the result? OK... but WRONG. We have the facts and you are flat out wrong but hey you gained 10 days of room rent and left the light on for next guest. How nice of you.
You really do have a reading problem, You have yet to produce a single fact that the hotel know there was anything wrong with the room.
If you care to read you will find that the medical examiner did do the test BUT NEVER INFORMED THE HOTEL.
Moral Compass checked? Come on, you are one willing to keep renting out the room without all the facts. Heart Attacks were only assumption not the facts.
The diagnosis of heart attack came from the ME. To the hotel it was fact because they never heard otherwise. Or are you saying that the hotel should have performed the autopsy?
Three other guest unexpectedly vomit with headaches and management notified. And you call out moral compass on others.
What facts? Do you have any? There is that reading comprehension problem again. A group of 13 year-old girls after stuffing themselves with pizza and ice cream get sick. Even the chaperon thought it was food poisoning. Do you know how often people get food poisoning while staying in hotels?
You are saying that the hotel had all their guest's health history and a medical examiner on staff. You do realize that this was a hotel not a hospital right?
A HOSPITAL is a place where DOCTORS do diagnosis of illnesses. They tell you all sorts of interesting things like why people died.
A HOTEL is a place where they rent you a ROOM.
They are not the same thing.
As a Medical Technologist, that's exactly what I was thinking! The appearance of the blood should have caused the medical personnel to suspect CO poisoning before any quantitative test was even done. The fact that an eleven year old boy died in the same room is a terrible tragedy and was completely avoidable. I think our society is way too litigious, but this is one case that certainly should be the subject of a lawsuit! It will not bring this mother's son back, but the owners of the hotel should be held to account for their negligence.
The negligence isn't on the part of the motel owners. I'm sure they will be sued, but I suspect the pool maintenance company's insurance will end up footing the bill.
By the way, thanks for the item on Gerulaitis. I had wondered what happened to him. We hear of McEnroe, Conners and Borg (who seems to have had the Star Trek androids named after him) every so often, but Gerulaitis seemed to have disappeared. Now I know why.
One thing I avoid is those hotels with the indoor pool in an atrium surrounded by the hotel. A lot of motels now have their indoor pool in an attached room off to the side...it's a much better idea.
I'm thinking that in the future I'll be only renting rooms where I can get some fresh air in it through a window or patio door.
You are correct about that! Someone posted an article later in the thread that stated the ME had the toxicology report for two weeks and had not informed the hotel that the results indicated that the older couple had died of CO poisoning. That truly IS criminal!
The owners only buy the right to use the name.
Same here, I saw the name and was wow, how about that.
The agreements are a bit more involved than that.
Clearly you are not an epidemiologist. Using google search to determine incident rate is definitely not a way to determine relative rate.
FYI On average about 170 people die every year from carbon monoxide.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.