5 hospitalized after CO scare in Ogden

OGDEN — Five people remain hospitalized for carbon monoxide poisoning after being exposed to deadly levels of the gas while at work.

It happened Tuesday about 7:46 p.m., when firefighters were dispatched to a report of a medical problem at Harsac, Inc., a cold-food storage business at 2550 Pacific Ave. Paramedics arrived to deal with an employee suffering a medical problem when their portable CO detector went off.

"They had high levels of carbon monoxide in their environment," Ogden Fire Chief Mike Mathieu said Wednesday. "They found that all five personnel working in the facility were exposed to heavy levels of carbon monoxide."

The portable CO detectors were registering 30-to-40 percent in the area. Employees had been working with propane-fueled forklifts for about 14 hours a day, causing the buildup of the deadly gas.

The five employees were taken to Ogden Regional and McKay-Dee hospitals. They were later taken to Salt Lake City area hospitals to be placed in oxygen chambers, Mathieu said.

Firefighters credit the portable CO detectors with saving the Harsac employees and paramedics' lives. The Ogden Fire Department made them mandatory on their gear following the 2006 poisoning of three Ogden police officers who responded to a call of a man found dead in his apartment. The death, and the officers' poisoning, was blamed on CO from a faulty water heater.

"The lessons learned from our previous carbon monoxide poisoning, it alerted us that we weren't dealing with a medical patient," Mathieu said. "We were dealing with a heavily contaminated carbon monoxide environment."

The chief said he can recall at least three incidents where paramedics have responded to treat a possible heart attack victim, but their portable CO detectors have alerted them to a poisoning.

"That's the critical thing with CO," he said. "It's always been known as the silent killer."

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