Carbon Monoxide

Quick. What would you do? It's 1:00 a.m. You wake up to the sound of the carbon monoxide alarm down the hall beeping. Not the once every 30 seconds because the battery is low kind of beeping. The GET OUT OF THE HOUSE NOW -- DANGEROUS CARBON MONOXIDE HAS INVADED YOUR HOME kind of beeping is screaming (4 beeps every 5 seconds!) to interrupt your peaceful sleep. Again, I ask, what would you do?

Need more info before you can decide? Okay, here's some context.

A) Your baby is sleeping in her room (through the alarm, what a good baby). Yes, you've checked. She's still breathing.

B) You know that carbon monoxide is most likely to be the result of a gas leak or something. You don't even have gas in your home. It's all electric.

C) The alarm is new - only a year old.

D) Google says (yes, you're sitting in bed Googling "carbon monoxide alarm beeping") that carbon monoxide leaks can be caused by grilling indoors and you did use the grill pan earlier that evening.

E) You take the alarm outside in the fresh air and it keeps beeping.

F) You try taking out the batteries and putting in new batteries (or at least batteries that you know work because you've stolen them from the perfectly functioning remote control).

Okay, so that's more context. So, again, I ask what would you do?

Do you take out the batteries and just go back to sleep, hoping/assuming/believing it's just a malfunctioning device and everything is fine? OR do you call 911 and seek fresh air immediately just in case the thing is actually right (as the alarm is urging you to do with each beep and flash)? Bear in mind that one of the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning is disorientation that leads to poor decision-making and inability to escape (at least according to our middle-of-the-night Google session).

I'll give you a few more seconds to decide...Got your answer? Either way you would have been fine in this case. When this happened to us on Saturday night, we opted to call 911, (well, 311 first). We didn't want the news article to read: "The fallen family apparently heard the alarm but assumed it was a mistake. Authorities found a carbon monoxide device and batteries strewn across the nightstand"!

We decided to err on the side of carbon caution.

Cut to the 911 operator discovering we live in a condo connected to other units and suddenly we're a big deal, urged to evacuate immediately. Then cut to me waking up the baby, wrapping her in a blanket and escaping the house in our pajamas. And just seconds later twelve firefighters in their firefighting sleep clothes (some in house slippers!) sleepily shuffled past Rosie and me to follow Jon into our house. The head guy (actually wearing his uniform) carried in a giant straight-out-of-Ghostbusters carbon monoxide detector with a three-foot antenna. And then cut to just a minute later when about 11 of them shuffled back out, most of them heading straight back to the truck.

Apparently, it was a false alarm. Rosie did a great job entertaining the remaining guys on the front lawn while the head guy talked to Jon inside.

Rosie, being her usual easygoing self, giggled, smiled, reached for, and babbled at the firefighters, drank a bottle, and then fell right back asleep as soon as we could get back in the house.

Jon and I fell back into our bed around 3 a.m. and finally caught our breath (deep, oxygen-filled breaths) and a few winks before Rosie got up at 6:30.

So, whether you would have done what we did or just gone back to bed, in this case, you would have been just fine. Either way, use this post as a reminder to check all your alarms, smoke and otherwise. Be safe, everyone!