San Diego
A father rescued his family of six Thursday morning from a house filled with carbon monoxide, fire officials said.
The family went to sleep in its Encanto house about 8 p.m. Wednesday, but when Mack Toney, 27, awoke at 6:30 a.m., he felt disoriented, fire officials said. Toney telephoned a nearby family member who called for help.
The family was taken to Grossmont Hospital in La Mesa at 8:21 a.m. and placed in a hyperbaric chamber, treated and released. The chamber is a specially equipped pressure vessel used to administer oxygen at high pressure.
Fire officials blamed the incident on two side plates missing from the house’s forced-air heater.
“These people were very, very lucky,” a Fire Department spokesman said. “People need to, especially in this type of weather, check their furnace and make sure that it’s clean. But if you do more than clean it and change the filter, get a professional because otherwise it becomes basically a lethal weapon then.”
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