Okaloosa Island, FL – A family in Okaloosa County is breathing a sigh of relief on Friday after a big scare earlier that morning.
The Fort Walton Beach family of four was hospitalized for carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning.
The mother is more embarrassed than anything for getting distracted and forgetting her car running in the garage.
The family is expected to be okay but fire crews said this could have been a deadly accident.
Okaloosa Island Fire Captain John Brinkerhoff said their detectors were going off the charts when they entered the home.
They registered at over 1,000 parts per million of CO.
Brinkerhoff said fire crews were called out to a home in the 400 block of Cobia Avenue around 4 a.m.
The parents noticed something was wrong when they woke up to their children crying and started to feel ill.
Brinkerhoff said a car in the garage was accidentally left running for seven hours, which caused the home to fill with dangerous CO gas.
“That’s part of the lesson to be learned in this; they had smoke detectors which are emphasized by fire departments to always have in your home however the dual mode ones are the better ones to roll with because CO is a very deadly gas as well and they did not have the CO detector in there,” Brinkerhoff said. “Grandma stated that they’re going to have one from this point forward.”
He encourages everyone to install CO detectors on every floor of your home.
Make sure to check the batteries if you already have them and use daylight saving time as a reminder to change them twice a year.
The home was ventilated for several hours before anyone was allowed back inside.