A Riverview councillor knows first-hand how important it is to have a carbon monoxide detector in your home because it can help to save lives.
Tammy Rampersaud has a natural gas furnace in her home. At around 3 a.m. Saturday, she awoke to the sound of the carbon monoxide detector alarm going off.
She found a reading of 52 on the detector, but it normally says 0. Her first thought was to check on the family and the pets and luckily they were okay.
Rampersaud opened the windows to air the home out, which brought the reading back down to zero. She was unsure at that point whether the detector had malfunctioned or if the high reading was correct.
She contacted the fire department, who came to her home with their meter to see if they found levels of carbon monoxide in the air.
“It turned out, the problem was the furnace. There is a cap on the panel on the inside of the furnace that was not there, that should have been there. The heat exchanger on the natural gas furnace wasn’t venting properly,” Rampersaud said.
Once it was fixed, it was frightening what Liberty Utilities — formerly Enbridge Gas — told her.
“If the detector hadn’t gone off, or if we didn’t have one, we wouldn’t have been so lucky,” said Rampersaud.
Carbon monoxide is an odourless, colourless gas and without a detector, you may not know you have it in your home until it is too late.
“My daughter was sleeping in the basement, and it would have affected her first. That is really scary. We are so thankful that the detector woke me up, we’re so thankful for the fire department, and we are so thankful for the people at Liberty who helped us out,” Rampersaud said.
Rampersaud says they immediately added a third carbon monoxide detector, so there is now one on every floor.
