City Task Force Will Consider Wall Heater Inspection Program

Atask force will consider whether the city of San Diego should institute periodic inspections of natural gas wall heaters in hotels, apartments and private homes under a plan approved Wednesday by a San Diego City Council committee.

The vote came 15 days after a Canadian volleyball player died and his teammate was critically injured when they were overcome by carbon monoxide from a partly clogged wall heater in their Mission Valley Inn hotel room on New Year’s Day.

Cory Louis Korosi, 21, a member of the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology volleyball team, was found dead in the room. Henry Kim Wong, 20, also of Calgary, suffered severe carbon monoxide poisoning that left him comatose, but recovered sufficiently to be sent home.

The council’s Public Services and Safety Committee gave the task force 45 days to report back on the feasibility and cost of periodic inspections of heating systems--but not just for the city’s more than 29,000 hotel rooms.

Councilwoman Linda Bernhardt, who proposed creation of the task force, said she also wants it to study an inspection program for potentially dangerous heating systems in rental housing and owner-occupied homes. The latter could be inspected at the time of sale, she said.

The city now inspects homes only when a complaint is received.

The task force will include representatives of the San Diego County Hotel Motel Assn., the San Diego Apartment Assn., SDG&E;, the county Department of Health Services, the city Fire Department, a city housing advisory panel and the Building Inspection Department.

Funding for an inspection program could come from hotel owners or the room occupancy tax assessed on visitors, Bernhardt said. But Thomas Vincent, president of the Hotel Motel Assn., said he would not support a requirement that hotel owners pay a fee for the inspections.

Bernhardt also asked the task force to report back on designing a stepped-up campaign to warn the public of the dangers of carbon monoxide, both from wall heaters and other sources, such as charcoal barbecues operated in confined spaces.

A 24-year-old man, Lyle Dean Fritz, died Jan. 8 on Fiesta Island, apparently of carbon monoxide poisoning, when he went to sleep in his car after barbecue coals were placed in the trunk.

Councilman Wes Pratt, the committee chairman, said there needs to be a mechanism to assure the public and tourists that they are safe.

The task force’s most difficult assignment may be determining which homes and hotels are equipped with the gas-fire wall units and which have other systems that do not pose the threat of producing the odorless, colorless carbon monoxide gas.

The gas-fired wall heaters are most commonly found in older homes and hotels, said Michael Kemp, a deputy director of the city’s Building Inspection Department. “We don’t have a clear picture as to the extent of the problem in hotels and motels,” Kemp said.

Council members also raised the possibility of inspecting hotels for other safety measures, such as working smoke alarms. The city found a number of inoperative smoke alarms when it inspected the Mission Valley Inn after Korosi’s death.