Real Stories. Real Families

Brian's story - Boiler room causes Carbon Monoxide leak

Hello, I would just like to thank you (Kidde) for saving my life. If it weren’t for your carbon monoxide detector I wouldn't be around to write you this letter. Here's what happened in a nutshell. I was heading to bed last night and as soon as I laid down I heard 4 beeps then silence then 4 beeps. My first thought was that it was a fire alarm and someone in my apartment building must have burned something bad enough to set the whole building off. Well, when I looked at the detectors I saw the light blinking on the carbon monoxide detector. I woke my Fiancée up and opened the sliding glass door, and while we were leaving the building I called 911. It turns out that the fire department detected 40ppm CO in my apartment (mind you this was after the door was open for several minutes) and 100ppm in the vacant apartment below me. Dangerous enough that they wore air masks. They said if anyone were living there they would have been dead. The apartment with the 100ppm reading was over the boiler room and apparently one of the workers blocked an air vent with cardboard and duct tape. This caused the systems to vent inside the building and naturally the room right above that was the apartment below me, and when that room filled up it came into my bedroom. This is very scary because had the detector not gone off, I probably would not have waken up. I just want to say that if it wasn't for the entire Kidde Company, from the engineers that designed this system to the people that deliver them, I wouldn't be alive. For that I am truly thankful. I just want you to know that you have my eternal gratitude, for each day after this would probably never have happened if your product hadn't told me something was wrong. I thank you very much, and you should all be proud of such a terrific life saving product.

Brian, Framingham, MA

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