Jack M Posted December 19, 2006 Report Share Posted December 19, 2006 http://www.cnn.com/2006/WEATHER/12/19/northwest.storm.ap/index.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest SAVEtheSWALLOWTAIL Posted December 19, 2006 Report Share Posted December 19, 2006 natural selection sucks but has to happen. charcoal in the bedroom? what the hell. did it get that cold??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pebu Posted December 19, 2006 Report Share Posted December 19, 2006 Generator in the livingroom? You'd think you could at least run a cord outside to the generator. We'd lose power for days at a time and we barely payed any attention to it. I'm still alive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wavechaser Posted December 19, 2006 Report Share Posted December 19, 2006 Got some Darwin Award nominees there for sure! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Art Posted December 19, 2006 Report Share Posted December 19, 2006 Having gone on some of these (I was off when My shift had 35 Somalis with CO poisoning from BBqs in our first due) I can tell you it is all too common. We have see Hmong, Lao, and Vietnamese with small Hibachi stoves in their homes cooking inside (not just because of the storm but on a regular basis). It is not uncommon to go into a Somali home and see charcoal on the stove as incense. I cant figure out the whole generator in the bedroom thing, must have been pretty noisy to sleep but again he was not demonstrating a superrior intellect. It has been an epidemic here since the power went out. I love it when the media calls it a faulty generator whne a person fails to keep it secure, it vibrates into the wall and catches it on fire. No accountability. the local immigrant community leaders have done a poor job of education their respective population about these kinds of hazards. Zero preparation as a whole with the expectation that the government will clean up the mess. between the fires and the stupidity my job will be secure for a long time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Galen Posted December 20, 2006 Report Share Posted December 20, 2006 ....I guess my intellect isn't high enough to see the humor in it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allee Posted December 20, 2006 Report Share Posted December 20, 2006 My bosses at my last job almost died of CO poisoning. They'd moved into a new house on an acreage in the summer and nobody had realised that their cold air intake was too close to the ground. When it snowed it clogged, and they slowly poisoned themselves over a couple of weeks, not able to figure out why the kids were so sick and lethargic. The next Saturday morning he came down to do some work, sat down in a chair and couldn't figure out why he was there. Luckily, his father dropped in, guessed immediately what was wrong and got them all out. The two youngest kids ended up in the hyperbaric chamber. They had a very narrow escape - if not for Dad they'd all probably be dead. A sobering story and a plug for CO2 alarms. Nasty stuff indeed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D-Sub Posted December 20, 2006 Report Share Posted December 20, 2006 ....I guess my intellect isn't high enough to see the humor in it. I had a hard time, too. Yes..."darwinism" but...accidental death isnt really humorous. Sure seems dumb to run combustion engines indoors though you know...I used to have this Honda chopper...big mean bike that always ran really rich and never well. I was always messing with that thing. One day I was doing so in a closed garage...firing it up, letting it sputter and run for a while, tryin to tweak the carbs... got up to go inside the house for somethin and thought "wth? did I smoke somethin?" feelin all woosy and stupid.. as I opened the door between garage and house I looked back and saw how much exhaust had accumulated in the garage and realized exactly what was happening. Opened the big door and went outside and took big deep breaths with big exhalations for about 15 minutes and felt fine, but I think I was very close to losing it I can see where that might have been "funny" in a way...but I doubt those I left behind would have thought so Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neuffy Posted December 20, 2006 Report Share Posted December 20, 2006 It's more schadenfreude with a decent dose of natural law than humor, really. Much like the Darwin Awards. Schadenfreude's taking joy in the misery of others. Natural law is how it is appropriate that those who shoot cops get shot. Or how those who drive _way_ too fast wrap their vehicles around telephone poles. Or how rejecting reality results in reality often rejecting you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wavechaser Posted December 20, 2006 Report Share Posted December 20, 2006 A sobering story and a plug for CO alarms. If you heat your house in the winter with ANYTHING that has a flame or exhaust system you need a CO alarm (battery powered)...period. In low income housing it should be law and provided by the landlord, if not the government. The family story is incredibly sad - and they probably thought the garage would be an OK place for the gen. With the public information put out every winter about CO dangers - and the stories EVERY winter of what happens to those that ignore those warnings, it's still hard to believe that a person would run a gen in their living room, and even harder to believe a charcol grill in the bedroom - much less go without a CO alarm. It's natural selection at work...heck, maybe they were drug addicts. I agree with the Natural Law thing - these folks rejected reality, and it indeed rejected them. Call it what you will - but I think the Darwin Awards are hilarious. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patmoore Posted December 20, 2006 Report Share Posted December 20, 2006 I remember reading about a family living in a raised ranch house north of Hartford, CT who died in their sleep about twenty years ago. One of the parents parked the car in the garage and left it running. The house had been recently winterized to prevent cold air leaks. Tragically, all members of the family died in their sleep. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BobD Posted December 20, 2006 Report Share Posted December 20, 2006 to an NEC electrical code book near you. CO detectors are going to become NEC electrical code soon. However some states don't adopt the latest NEC code for several years after it comes out - mainly those states that need it most. When we moved in to our new house 10 years ago, we bought new appliances and a CO detector. The CO detector kept going off, so we called the gas co, thinking it would be the furnace. Our brand new range was condemned as dangerous ( I forget which well known brand). I often think I should pack a CO detector when I travel. You often end up sleeping in basement rooms near a furnace, or even in cabins where you have no idea of the code applied to gas appliance installation or maintanance. BobD Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Art Posted December 20, 2006 Report Share Posted December 20, 2006 Most of the families we saw his past week with the charcoal grills are from Africa. It is not uncommon to have open flames in their (well ventilated) abodes. Even then if you look at places like Tibet or Nepal where Yak dung is the primary fuel source a lot of health problems arise even with "decent" ventilation. We use gas blowers to remove smoke and we can charge a house to 300 PPM CO pretty quick (35 is the level we have to go to SCBA) with the windows open (usuallly we control the exit points). People forget the furnace will blow the CO from the garage through the house. I have had many a CO headache from when I was a mechanic and even yesterday, outside at a large fire http://www.king5.com/localnews/stories/NW_121906WABkentfire_causeSW.26a2b196.html I had the affects of it from the smoke and apparatus exhaust after the fire was out. Bad stuff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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