Off-Duty Firefighter Detects CO Leak At Medway Day Care
MEDWAY (CBS) -- An off-duty Medway firefighter detected a carbon monoxide leak at his children's day care Monday morning, evacuating the building before anyone was hurt.
"I smelled a sulfurous type of odor when I walked in and I knew immediately something wasn't right," Lieutenant Matthew Anzivino said.
Anzivino was dropping his children off at the Episcopal Church on School Street around 7:41 a.m. when he noticed an odor in the building that smelled like burning oil.
There were ten people inside the building at the time, including children.
"I investigated a little further and it seemed to be all throughout the building so I asked the school director and her teacher to get the children out of the building so we could dispatch the fire department," he said.
Fire companies responded and found CO readings of up to 600 ppm in the church's basement.
"It's not something that would immediately cause death," says Medway Fire Chief Jeff Lynch, "but an exposure in as little as an hour at that level could cause some very serious issues and that's in an adult, in a child it would be even worse."
Since it was so early, those inside the building had only been there for a short amount of time, and no one needed medical attention--though all were evaluated as a precaution.
The leak was the result of an oil burner malfunction. The church did have a working CO detector, but nobody present was able to hear it.
"Sometimes you smell things and you think nothing of it," Anzivino said. "I just knew it wasn't right. It was lucky that I was dropping off today."