Family home contaminated with CO

Can't go back until home passes inspection

CREVE COEUR -- A Creve Coeur family can not return to its home after a carbon monoxide leak contaminated the house.

The family woke up Wednesday morning to toxic levels of the gas from a furnace which had been leaking for some time.

Two adults and a 5-year-old boy became sick.

The Creve Coeur police chief says the furnace has been a problem in the past.

Chief Mike Button says the family will be issued a citation because the home did not have a carbon monoxide detector.

"The law is there for a reason we're going to enforce it fortunately nobody was seriously injured in this incident but it could serve as a lesson to a lot of people in the community that it could happen to anybody whether it's a new house or an old house," said Button.

The family can return to the home after its passed an inspection by the fire department. [So not only do they get sick, but they also get virtually kicked out of their home until it passes an inspection! I think it would have been wiser and more cost effective to have bought a CO detector like the Pocket CO from www.transducertech.com and saved themselves a heap of trouble.]

A state law requires every home to have a carbon monoxide detector.