San Antonio, TX- A dozen people, including children, were taken to a local hospital early Tuesday after a carbon monoxide leak at a West Side hotel, firefighters said.
The call was reported just before 2 a.m. at the Comfort Suites near SeaWorld in the 8000 block of Alamo Downs Parkway.
Firefighters said they originally received a call for a sick party and thought it was food poisoning until they saw the amount of people affected.
They took a carbon monoxide reading and determined what was wrong.
“On the exhaust for one of the water heaters, one of the pipes was disconnected, so it wasn’t exhausting properly. So, the rooms were sucking in the carbon monoxide,” said Assistant Chief Neal Ague, of the San Antonio Fire Department.
Ague said it was a good thing the leak was found right away, because the incident could have resulted in deaths.
The hotel was evacuated while firefighters ventilated the building and aired out the hotel.
After hazmat teams verified that carbon monoxide levels were safe in every room, guests were allowed back to their rooms.
But Keith Wheatley said he and his family weren’t about to take chances.
“They gave us the signal we could go back in, but we like everybody else, we got our stuff and are now looking for somewhere else to stay,” Wheatley said.