Stroudsburg, PA – State legislators are hopeful that a proposal requiring carbon monoxide detectors in all newly built and newly sold homes will become law next year.
The legislation takes on added urgency following the carbon monoxide poisoning that took the life of an 82-year-old East Stroudsburg woman Thursday.
Virginia Brecheisen was found by a caretaker on the upper floor of her Kistler Street home, the apparent victim of exhaust fumes from a car she left running in the home’s ground floor garage.
State Reps. Mike Carroll, D-118, and Mario Scavello, R-176, are among co-sponsors of a bill that would require any existing residential building with a fossil fuel-burning heater or appliance, fireplace or attached garage to have a carbon monoxide alarm installed whenever the building is sold. Buyer and seller would negotiate terms for compliance.
All multi-family rental dwellings with similar heating or attached garage would have to meet the detector requirement within a year of the bill’s adoption. Owners would have to make sure fresh batteries are in each carbon monoxide detector whenever a new tenant moves in.
Current homeowners wouldn’t be required to install carbon monoxide detectors unless and until the home is sold.
“If you own a home and you don’t put it in, then shame on you,” Scavello said of not requiring retroactive compliance. Detectors cost between $15 to $60 apiece.
Law in six months
The bill was referred to the state House Consumer Affairs Committee late last year. It was amended in May before being reported out of committee for additional consideration.
Failure to install or maintain a carbon monoxide alarm would be punishable by a $50 fine under the bill. Tampering with or removing batteries from an alarm in a residential building or multi-family dwelling would carry a $500 fine. A second offense would be a third degree misdemeanor punishable by a $3,000 fine.
Scavello said that if elected this fall, he will move the bill to an unnamed committee to which he expects to be named chairman next year. He predicted the bill would become law in six months.
Painful memory
Brecheisen’s death brought back a painful memory for Hamilton Township resident Duane Kerzic, whose brother suffered carbon monoxide poisoning in New Jersey in the early 1990s but survived.
“He was feeling ill during the winter,” Kerzic recalled. “Spring came and he was fine. Then winter came again and he started feeling ill.”
His brother bought a detector, stuck a battery in it, and the alarm went off. Thinking the alarm might be broken, he exchanged it and the new one went off too. He called in the fire department, which tested and confirmed the presence of carbon monoxide and sent the man to the hospital as a precaution.
The problem was cause by a roofing contractor inadvertently covering a vent, trapping the gas inside.