It was about 4:00 a.m. when Sharron Peltier heard the carbon monoxide alarm going off. Along with her husband Paul, Sharron checked the detector they just bought two months ago and found it had a reading of about 70 ppm.
The Peltiers woke up their children and started opening windows. At that time, Paul remembered unusually high snow drifts he saw outside the day before. He says a drift piled about five feet high had covered the utility meters outside the house, as well as the furnace vents. Carbon monoxide was pouring into the house.
The Peltiers got the biggest surprise when they plugged in a detector in the basement. The reading there was up to 500 ppm. 400 ppm is life-threatening after four hours of exposure. [Actually, 400ppm is life threatening almost immediately. If you walked into a room with 400ppm of CO in it, you'd get sick within minutes. See more info about CO in this blog, or go to www.transducertech.com and look for the Pocket CO.] Had anyone been sleeping in the basement, they likely would not have made it through the night.
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