Carbon monoxide nearly kills 2 at 7-Eleven
By JACK KNARR , Staff Writer
The 7-Eleven on Arena Drive in Hamilton.
HAMILTON - Two Trenton men were rescued in the nick of time after being overcome by the odorless, colorless, killer carbon monoxide as they power-washed a cooler box at a 7-Eleven on Arena Drive here yesterday.
As township firefighter/EMTs Christopher Mull and Woody Emmons and Capt. Joe Troyano were arriving on the 12:22 p.m. call, the two independent cleaning workers inside collapsed into unconsciousness to the floor, said Deputy Chief Richard Kraemer of Hamilton Fire District 6.
After being rushed to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital at Hamilton, the two men were believed to have been transferred to a specialty center for concentrated treatment, a fire official said. Their conditions were unknown. The hospital as usual refused comment.
The store, located at 1993 Arena Dr., was ordered shut down overnight by Lisa Surtees, the township's environmental health specialist. She said all containers in the cooler box were being washed off with a bleach and water solution, and any open foods -- eggs, oranges, onions - were being discarded. She said she'll conduct a reopening inspection at 7 a.m. today. "Hopefully the store can reoppen at that time."
Kraemer said the incident began as a medical assignment.
"When they arrived, they found one patient located in the back storeroom who was semi-conscious and then became unconscious. He collapsed to the floor," said the deputy chief.
The three rescuers weren't wearing air-packs; they had no idea what they were ruinning into.
"But once they got in there they realized there was a bigger situation," Kraemer said. "They brought the victim out. And the captain sent one of the crew members out to the apparatus to start gathering the air packs and the detector that we use to measure CO and things like that."
A second semi-conscious worker was spotted - he also succumbed to high levels of CO and fell unconscious, but the firefighters quickly strapped on their airpacks and brought the second man out on a backboard, Kraemer said.
"So they went in there for one, and they came out rescuing two guys. They were 'altered' and then they just passed out."
The workers had been using a spray cleaner and the gasoline-powered power washer emitting CO inside the confines of the cooler box and store, splattering dirt and debris onto containers, and necessitating the store shutdown and clean-up.
"For safety sake," said Walt Broneck, chief of Hamilton Hazmat and coordinator of the Office of Emergency Management, "this is a cardinal rule in operating power equipment, whether it be in your garage or in a shed or any closed environment: You never ever want to allow CO to be released into the environment in which you are working.
"It was a real bad choice by those people who were doing it," he said. "Shortcuts kill. This could have been their demise."
CO readings in the cooler box measured in excess of 400 parts per million - "extremely high," Kraemer said. "Thirty-five parts per million actually will alarm our detectors. Up in the main storeroom area, it was in the low 200s." But two owner/employees, Kyong and Kwang Lee, in their late 40s, along with eight patrons, were unaffected.
"The only thing we can figure out why they didn't have any ill effects from it was (1) the air-conditioning system, and (2) the volume that that store does, the front door is always opening and closing, so there's probably an influx of fresher air." And they weren't in a spot where CO could be trapped.
7-Eleven administrators did not return calls requesting comment. |
