Cleveland, OH – A carbon monoxide scare has removed two families from their home at the Neal Terrace apartments on Cleveland’s West Side for the second time this week.
The Cleveland Fire Department and emergency medics responded Sunday to two households and found readings of 65 parts per million (ppm). The readings were not as bad as Wednesday’s readings of 500 ppm but bad enough to send one family to the hospital and the other to stay with relatives.
A mother of four refused to talk to the media, saying she may pursue legal representation after the five of them returned home from the hospital.
Neil Terrace management was on site Sunday and told Channel 3 News they have been working around the clock to deal with this issue since the first carbon monoxide poisoning happen Wednesday evening.
“My son fell in the tub and he started having a seizure in the tub and I pulled him out. I started looking for my daughter. I couldn’t find her then she’s in her room with throw up everywhere. She was like ‘Mommy help me’ and then she dropped to the floor,” said Limarie Hammock.
Hammock and her kids spent Wednesday night at the hospital after their CO detector read 500 ppm. She says she told Neal Terrace management about the constant beeping.
“I said that thing has been going on for days and they told me to unplug it,” Hammock said. “I was like alright, I’ll just listen to them because I didn’t know anything about carbon monoxide.”
Now she does. She’s one of six people from two different households who returned home Saturday after spending a few hours in the hospital Wednesday and three days in a hotel while management worked on their units.
Management put a second detector in every home Friday.
Still, Sunday another two families were displaced because of high CO levels including several children.
“They try to weld the pipe here they could not fix it and they put electrical tape on there,” said Jose Cruz.
Cruz’s family says the maintenance crews has cut corners on their repairs and now that those repairs sent them to the hospital, they want to move.
“We don’t have family over here. We don’t have nobody,” said Cruz. “Where can we stay?”
“I don’t feel safe,” said Hammock. “I still feel shaky and I don’t even know if I trust those machines if they are safe to tell us anything.”
Cleveland Fire public information officer Larry Gray says dominion East Ohio cut off all of the boilers that were releasing carbon monoxide.
“It’s very frustrating,” said Gray. “This is the third family that had to go to the hospital.
“It’s very disheartening for the same thing to occur twice in a week. The owner needs to be accountable. It looks like faulty work on the piping and the boiler system. They need to get someone licensed and certified to do the repairs. I’m not saying they didn’t do that, but (with) a reading of 500 ppm (it) does not appear to be so.”