Real Stories. Real Families

Jeff's story - CO alarm purchase one week earlier saves lives

Not long ago, during the Christmas season, my family was all decked out in pajama's, kids were taking their showers, fire blazing in the fireplace, getting ready to spend the evening watching "Its a Wonderful Life" on TV.   The perfect holiday evening with the family. It was late, and we debated  just going on to bed and skipping the movie until the next night. Suddenly we heard this loud horn-like sound, and couldn't figure out what it was. I thought it might be the smoke detector. I went upstairs to the  source of the sound - at the top of the hall. It wasn't the smoke alarm. I  looked down and saw the Nighthawk CO alarm, which we'd just purchased that  week. It was making the alarm noise. My first thought - it must be mistaken. It was one that had the numeric readout, and the numbers were VERY high. I reset it, assuming it was a mistake, and I watched the numbers rise again when it started back up. I unplugged it, plugged it back in, and  the numbers kept rising. I still didn't understand. We looked all over the house, couldn't figure out where the CO could be coming from, but I decided that we had to respect the detector, so I had the family put on their coats, go outside to a neighbors house, and I called 911 from there. They  sent over the fire department, who told me when they got to our house "oh,  must be some small something." But when they walked into the house with their handheld detectors, and went to the basement, they quickly put on their breathing apparatus. There was a MAJOR problem in the basement that was related to the water heater, and the house was rapidly filling with CO. 

 

The fireman told me that if we had gone to bed that night, we would have all been dead by morning. He said the CO detector saved our lives. I told everyone at work our story the next day. But I realized I've never told you, Thank You. It is no exaggeration at all to say that your company's product saved the life of me and my family. It's as simple as this: had we not installed your CO detector a week earlier, and had it not worked exactly as it was designed to do , we would have been one of those tragic stories on the news where an entire family, including 3 children, are found dead in the beds on a holiday morning. 

 

So Thank You from the heart. And please pass this along to the people who design and make you Nighthawk detectors. Thank your for saving my life and the life of my family. (As you might expect, I am now an evangelist for CO detectors! I buy them for everyone!)

 

Jeff Lackey and family,  IL
 

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