Residents of a Kelowna, B.C., apartment building were advised to shelter in place on Monday afternoon as firefighters ventilated the building, following the discovery of carbon monoxide (CO).
Platoon captain Shayne Kiehlbauch says FortisBC was alerted to a malfunctioning HVAC unit set up on the roof of the Glenpark Village Meadows apartment building on Whitman Road.
“It was pumping CO into the building, just into the common areas like the first, second, third floors of the building,” he said.
“Fortis had shut off the gas to the unit and our crews came on scene to ventilate the building to get rid of the CO.”
Elevated CO readings, he said, were detected on the fourth floor.
“Upwards of 200 parts per million,” Kiehlbauch said. “We usually evacuate at around 35 parts per million.”
But most of the units are heated by electric baseboards, which cannot emit carbon monoxide, so residents were advised to stay in their units while the building was cleared of the potentially deadly gas.
“The units weren’t affected because the units have their own heat system, so what we did, it’s called shelter in place,” he said.
“So we left the residents in their units and once they ventilated the hallways, then we went to check on the other units, but it sounds like the other units weren’t affected.”
Kiehlbauch said no one was injured and BC Ambulance was on standby as precaution.
He said it’s rare for elevated levels of CO to be detected in large apartment or condo buildings.
“A call of this magnitude, a big building like this, we don’t get many of those,” he said.
“We get a lot more calls for residential issues, but apartment buildings of this size, there hasn’t been a lot.”
Kiehlbauch said the incident is a good reminder of the importance of functioning smoke and CO detectors, including routine maintenance and replacement.
“Check your batteries if they are battery-operated ones and they only have around a seven-year shelf life from the date you install it,” he explained, “so they need to be replaced every seven years.”