Belleville, IL- BELLEVILLE Firefighters concerned over a crack found in a boiler in the basement of a Belleville nursing home Monday returned Tuesday and detected levels of carbon monoxide more than 83 times what’s considered acceptable in homes.
Belleville Fire Chief Tom Pour said Thursday that fire department inspectors were completing their yearly examination of Midwest Respiratory & Rehabilitation Center at 727 N. 17th St. Monday when they noticed a crack and scorch marks on one of the facility’s water boilers.
Pour said they returned Tuesday with carbon monoxide detectors and found that the air in the basement containted 750 parts per million of carbon monoxide. Pour said 9 ppm is an acceptable level of carbon monoxide inside a home or other building.
The nursing home’s operator, in a statement, emphasized that the increased levels were not detected in residential areas.
Pour, the fire chief, said carbon monoxide levels in the kitchen area above the boiler room reached around 50 ppm, a concentration he said would activate alarms.
Pour said firefighters also came across a recent report from the Office of the State Fire Marshal that recommended Midwest replace the leaky boiler. He said Midwest did not order a replacement boiler until this week.
It’s not clear when that State Fire Marshal recommendation was made. Officials in their Chicago, Springfield and Marion offices could not be reached for comment.
There was a mechanical problem with a boiler in the basement of the Midwest Respiratory & Rehabilitation Center on Tuesday which caused carbon monoxide level increases in a contained area of the basement only, a written statement from Integrity Healthcare Communities, the operator of the Belleville facility, said. Residential air quality was never affected. The boiler of concern has been put out of use per the choice of the Midwest facility. A new boiler has been ordered. Air quality is optimal and continues to be monitored for quality-assurance purposes.
Pour praised the heads-up inspectors who noticed the scorch mark and crack during the inspection, saying they spot a lot of things that may go unnoticed. And we don’t normally take a carbon monoxide meter on inspections.
As soon as we noticed the levels, we got the gas shut down and started ventilation, he said. In this case we may have saved some lives. Close to 800 (ppm of carbon monoxide), the charts say nausea and convulsions can occur and death can occur within two hours.