Yowling cats alert family to carbon monoxide
Web Posted: 12/09/2005 09:10 AM CST
Sheila Hotchkin
Express-News Staff Writer
With money tight and home heating prices nearly double last year, Veronica Cameron put up with the cold rather than turn on her heat.
The single mother nearly relented Wednesday night, as temperatures dipped below freezing, but one of her three daughters told her not to waste the money. So they turned off the heat after a couple minutes.
That decision probably saved their lives.
The family turned the heat back on as the girls got ready for school Thursday morning, and lethal levels of carbon monoxide gas filled the house in less than an hour. The girls left for school before the poisonous gas could overcome them; after they left, their mother realized something was wrong and called for help.
Cameron, 39, was treated at University Hospital. She was not the only case of carbon-monoxide poisoning in San Antonio on Thursday: Twenty minutes later, a family of seven fell ill on the Southwest Side. All eight victims got out of their homes and received help in time.
"My body feels like it's been run over," Cameron said as she waited to be released from the hospital Thursday night.
Cameron just graduated from Hallmark Institute of Technology, walking across the stage last Saturday. She's job-hunting now; in the meantime, she and her daughters — ages 17, 14 and 13 — have to watch their spending.
Her eldest daughter works at a restaurant to pay the water and electric bills. The teenager objected when her mother turned on the heat Wednesday night, saying they should leave it off to save money.
"I'm so thankful we turned it off because we all would have been dead," Cameron said less than 24 hours later.
Mother and daughters brought their four cats in from the cold and, wrapped in blankets, went to sleep. About 7 a.m. Thursday, as the girls got ready for school, the eldest told her mother to turn on the heat.
The girls left the house, in the 6700 block of Spring Lark Street on the Northwest Side, by 7:40 a.m.
Fifteen minutes later, the cats started yowling.
"They acted like they were dying," Cameron said. "They were making horrible noises."
She sat on the couch as she tried to calm them. When she stood up, her head started spinning. At first she thought it was because she only had coffee for breakfast. But by 8:15 a.m., she was concerned enough to call CPS Energy.
"I said, 'Do you think it's the heater?'" Cameron recalled. "And she told me to call 911, so I did."
By the time she called paramedics, Cameron had thrown up twice and was too weak to stand. She managed to round up the cats and go outside to wait for help.
Firefighters found carbon-monoxide levels of 910 parts per million inside the house. A person starts showing symptoms of carbon-monoxide exposure at 30 to 40 parts per million.
On the Southwest Side, carbon-monoxide levels reached 100 parts per million inside a house in the 5500 block of Cool Valley Lane. Someone inside the house felt sick Thursday morning and, realizing something was wrong, alerted the other six members of the family.
The victims — three adults and four children under the age of 7 — all were conscious as they were taken to a hospital.
Lucy Alvarado, who was standing outside the house after ambulances took the family away, identified the victims as her sister, Amelia Galan, her sister's kids and other relatives.
"I'm just so glad they're all OK," Alvarado said.
CPS Energy spokeswoman Theresa Brown Cortez said residents should have their furnaces checked twice a year by a licensed contractor. And the flame inside should burn blue.
"If it is not blue and you're getting a lot of yellows and oranges, it is creating carbon monoxide," she said.
She said any house with an appliance that burns natural gas also should have carbon-monoxide detectors. |
