Carbon Monoxide Alarm Saves Lives Of Lacey Family

LACEY, NJ — A Lanoka Harbor resident shared the importance of having a carbon monoxide detector in your home after a close call just before Thanksgiving.

Paul Field shared his story with Patch, thanking first responders for saving the lives of his family on Nov. 28.

Here's what Field had to say:

THANK YOU TO LACEY PD FIRE AND EMS FOR EVERYTHING LAST NIGHT AT 2AM.

So our heat has been playing up the past few days. We would turn it on and it would shut itself off in less than an hour so. We scheduled a replacement for the whole unit Saturday.

Last night we put it on just to keep the pipes warm for a little, coz if they freeze that's a whole new problem.

About 90 mins later the carbon monoxide alarm in the hall upstairs started going off. I reset it and moved it around the house and it continued to go off again. I opened all the windows. Then went to shut off the emergency off on the furnace, and it was super hot down there, but ran down real quick and got it turned off.

We decided to leave for a while as the house aired out, but I thought it was a good idea to call the local PD and see if anyone needs to come check the levels etc in the house.

When they came, they checked the alarm and it was pretty new so they had fire come.

When fire walked in the front door, their reader hit 700ppm which is very high, when they went in the basement it was over 1300ppm. From what they said, 25 is not good.

They had NJNG disconnect the gas, and put in a load of fans to clear it all out. They opened more windows - I had already opened a bunch and had every fan cranked.

Two hours later we were allowed back in.

They told us with those levels, if we had ignored the alarm, or didn't have one, we would have not woken up.

Glad to still be here.

If you don't have at least one Carbon Monoxide alarm, it will literally save your life!