Family sent to hospital for carbon monoxide poisoning
A Pueblo West family is back home after 12 people were rushed to the hospital for carbon monoxide poisoning.
The Pueblo West Fire Department found that high levels of carbon monoxide leaked inside the family’s home, in the 100 block of Ensenada Drive. The leak came from a water heater that wasn’t venting properly.
“The rain cap was on top of the vent so all the fumes that should have been escaping our house were coming back in,” said Sheri English, mother of 11 children.
A child sleeping in the home woke up feeling sick around 2 a.m. Wednesday. He then woke up his family members, and they noticed they weren’t feeling well either.
“I woke up to hearing one of my kids come out crying and upset. And it was Joseph. And then he felt like he was going to throw up and he was just sick feeling,” said Sheri English. She and her husband, along with 10 of their children, were home at the time of the leak. They were taken to Parkview Hospital.
Sheri English said at first the family thought it was food poisoning.
“Before we’d gone to bed that evening, a couple of my kids had said they felt like they had headaches,” Sheri English said.
Once more children began feeling sick, Sheri English’s husband, Tim, called 911. When sheriff’s deputies got to the home, they woke up the couple’s 16-year-old daughter, Abigail.
“I kind of made my way upstairs and I remember just going out the front door and then I fell over and I fainted,” said Abigail English.
Initially, firefighters thought the leak came from a faulty furnace but the investigation determined that was not the case. The family had one carbon monoxide detector, but Sheri English said it wasn’t working. Now, the family has two detectors.
“There have been fatalities from carbon monoxide and it’s been from people going to sleep and not waking back up,” said Brad Davidson, division chief of the Pueblo West Fire Department. “It just shuts your body down slowly; it takes the oxygen away.”
“You just think what if we hadn’t woken up? What if our kids hadn’t been throwing up? What if my husband hadn’t stayed up because he was in pain?,” Sheri English said.
The English family wants to remind others of the importance of having working, carbon monoxide detectors in their homes.
