Carbon Monoxide Scare

I went to bed last night at 11pm. I was woke up at 12 am by the carbon monoxide alarm blaring. I flew out of bed and call our housings emergency after hours line. Now when you call this line, you are only getting a relay service, who then call the actual maintenance person.The maintenance person then should call me back so I can explain to him whats going on. I bring all the kids down stairs and make sure they are awake. They watch cartoons and wait.( who would have thought that at midnight there will be 'The Proud Family' on tv?!?!)

Anyways, I waited about 10 minutes and I still had not heard from the maintenance man.I called the relay service to see what was going on. She said that she could not get a hold of him and that she would keep trying.I wait. and wait. and wait. Its now 1 am!!!A whole hour has passed. I finally heard from him. The first thing out of his mouth is"how are you ma'am?'' Are you kidding me?(mind you that its now 1 am and my alarm is still blaring) I responded" Well I'm not dead so I'm pretty good." I then proceeded to lace into the guy saying that it was unacceptable that no one could get a hold of him for this long and that, to me, a carbon monoxide detector blaring does qualify as a more severe emergency then say, a toilet overflowing. I told him that I know he had to get up out of his sleep, but that he's on-call and its wrong of him to not be available for so long. He then proceeded to tell me that they had an hour to respond to the issue!!!! WHAT??? My babies could be dead in an hour!!!( which I told him as well)

I'm not a very difficult person. I'm really not. But when it comes to my children's lives, that's a different story. I would have totally understood his delay if he apologized for taking so long or at least sounded sympathetic....but NO! Not at all. He was rather quite non-chalent and smug about it all...like I was crazy for making his tardiness such a big deal. whatever.

It is now 130 am and I still have no maintenance man at my house. Still nothing. I called my mama and she told me to call 911. I decided to call the MP's. They sent out a policeman( Brain E.) who was here in about 5 minutes time. He is the nicest and most helpful officer I have met in a verryy long time. He then called the fire department and the came( within 10 minutes of the call....just to throw it out there how late Chase the maintenance man was.)

The fireman came in and they got a reading! Carbon Monoxide had been detected in our house!!! Maybe Zachary's headaches were from that after all! I cannot believe I did think of this sooner!! Anyways, they opened all the windows and cleared out the air. We were outside when all of this was happening. They then put this little pulse looking thing on my finger to check if I had elevated levels in my system. I was cleared. I then asked them if they would do my boys and explained to the all about Zachary and his headaches. Mikey was cleared. Zachary had levels in him, but the firefighters said that it wasn't a child size reader so that the measurement was wrong.
I don't know how much I buy that, so I am going to cal Tricare today and set up appointments for all of us to be screened for it.( just as a precaution)

It is now 230 and still no maintenance man. The fireman came and left and Officer Brian was waiting with me until housing showed up. Well, at about 3 am a guy from housing( not the jerk chase) showed up saying the he was looking for space heaters for us. He said he checked the storage room at the housing office and there wasn't any there. He said he'd keep looking. At this point, I told the great Officer Brian that he really didn't have to stay.( i feel like he was doing it out of courtesy just to make sure we were ok) He said he wanted to make sure that housing showed up and were taking care of things. I thanked him( for his amazing help and kindness) and he was on his way.

By the time the officer leaves it is 345 am!!! I called back Chase( whose # was on my caller ID) and told him that no one has showed up with heaters and that I wanted him to call the guy and tell him to forget the heaters because we were all bundled and I was pooped. He said thanks for calling and that he would call and cancel the heaters. He said someone would be here first thing in the morning to check on the furnace...the gas furnace. So with that, I set out to sleep.

And boy did I sleep LOL!! Needless to say I kept Mikey home from school today. Poor things way tired but still was fighting me to go. He loves school! :)

Anyways, at 9 am this morning( about 5 minutes after I got up) A different maintenance man showed up. He checked out the furnace( where the fireman got a positive reading of carbon monoxide) and said he couldn't find anything wrong with it. No leaks or cracked or anything. He said some carbon is given off because of the open flame and that's normal. He did say that the two vents on the door to the furnace were clogged up and so that he thinks thats what caused the 'backup' of the carbon and that is what made it go off. He cleaned it out and replace the carbon monoxide monitor and battery. He told me to turn the heat on and then he walked through with a hand held detector. The reading came back clear upstairs, on the middle level and downstairs in my kitchen and dining room. All is good. so far. LOL! He said to call back if there's any more problems......

yeah. right.

I will be calling Fort Riley Mp's and Fort Riley Fire Fighters! They are highspeed and very friendly and professional!

So that's the highlight of my night. Lovely, eh???
Have any of you ever dealt with carbon monoxide scares???