Posted by:
Nightingale
(
)
Date: January 02, 2024 08:40PM
It's not surprising if church officials didn't particularly notice illness in the ranks. The symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning include headache, dizziness, nausea, disorientation and loss of consciousness. With the usual general malaise in the ranks during the stultifying meetings, maybe nothing alarming was obvious at first*.
A little 4-year-old girl seems to have been the first one affected as she began to have breathing problems. Yikes, so scary. The fire department attended. She had apparently been ill recently so it was at first thought this was a continuation of that problem. Then an adult male reported headache and the fire department received a second call-out. When a family member subsequently called the fire service for a man in distress who had been at the same meeting, the building was then checked for CO. Emergency Services seem to have deduced the problem quickly, connecting all the calls and similar symptoms to the same site, so that is fortunate.
Re costs related to medical issues, the article says that the church statement says the church "... is working to support medical and other expenses...". The writer adds "for the people who were poisoned". That has got to be among the worst of all possible publicity for any organization - that members, including a young child, were "poisoned" in their facility.
At first read I got the impression the church was planning to pick up all related expenses for anyone affected but when you read it again it doesn't precisely state that. "Working to support medical and other expenses" - that's a bit of a strange roundabout way to word it. Why couldn't they just say we are paying all related expenses for anyone affected. It kind of leaves it open to be read either way - "working to support" could mean they will pay ... or not - they should absolutely look after everyone's bills but who knows??
I guess the first responders were fortunate in that even though they didn't pick up on the CO issue at the first call, or the second, they got it with the third call. Some people had returned home and called from there. A call-taker somewhere was on the ball, quickly realizing the common thread with the first three people who were significantly affected - that they had all been at the same building. Too, the first responders could have been in danger themselves. Also, many more people could have been very negatively affected if there had been much of a delay in determining what the problem was.
It's never a good day for a church when 54 attendees in one meeting reported symptoms and 49 were found to have elevated levels of CO. The absolute least they should do is pick up all medical and other related expenses for their members/visitors (if any of the latter).
And install a CO monitor, tout de suite.
Here's a brief article about the incident:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/people-carbon-monoxide-poisoning-mormon-church-utah-rcna131819*Please excuse my nurse's humour. I couldn't resist with this one, as the meetings are so awfully boring and sleep-inducing, as we know from sad experience. Obviously, the situation itself isn't humourous, especially for those affected.
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/02/2024 08:47PM by Nightingale.