M1gunner:
When the CO detector sounds, get out of thee house, leaving the doors open. Call the FD.
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We have had seven smoke alarms in the house for many years.
First thing we learned is that they have a life span. If they are ten years old and work fine, replace them.
We were gone to work for the day when a neighbor noticed smoke in our kitchen. We had two alarms in the kitchen, plus one in a connecting hall and one in the dining room. That was in addition to one in a connected basement stairwell and two on the second floor.
The neighbor called the FD and me. I called the FD and told them they certainly had MY permission to break in as needed, and how to disable the burglar alarm.
They did, found a pan on the stove with breakfast I had forgotten, burning merrily, no significant smoke damage YET. They also tested the smoke alarms and found four of them inop. They were all over 10 years old and I had replaced the batteries in them and tested them all within the past year.
In addition to simply wearing out, newer ones use newer technology. It is worth upgrading.
I was one of the city FD commissioners at the time and so got a humorous lecture. I ALSO got a lesson in detectors and their limitations.
We've also had a CO detector for many years. It is 110V wired with battery backup. Like the smoke detectors it beeps when the battery is low. Also like the smoke detectors is seems to be a ventriloquist that can throw its "voice" quite a ways from its location. Took me a while to believe it was that battery.
The only likely source for CO in our house is the furnace. So, while CO is heavy and tends to sink to the floor, when the furnace distributes it we know it can be almost anywhere.
Most fire departments will tell you that education over the past generation has been very good, and structure fires are increasingly rare. That's true in middle-class neighborhoods and above. In poor neighborhoods people can't/don't pay their gas bill, the gas is shut off, and they buy cheap electric space heaters and wind up with a fire. This past winter Milwaukee experienced deaths when one family used a kerosene or other type of gas heater indoors and suffocated from CO.
Despite laws prohibiting the gas company from shutting off the gas for lack of payment, many low income people are at the mercy of landlords who may not qualify for that exemption, or who don't apply for it. Sometimes it is the landlord who shuts it off.
