A Rude Awakening

The night before last at about 12:30 AM we awoke to the blaring of all four of our smoke/ CO2 detectors. And by awoke I mean I laid in bed listening to them groggily trying to process just what exactly was going on and sniffing for smoke for the first 5 min or so.

Eventually I came to my senses and got up. By that time Aaron had already gotten up and was trying to disable the alarm. I called out to him asking if there was smoke, still not quite sure just what exactly was going on. (I am not a morning person let alone a jarred from your deep sleep wake up and be halfway coherent person.)

It was determined that there was indeed no smoke neither outside nor in, but every time we put the smoke detector back on it went off, so we naturally left it off and went back to bed.

While lying in bed it occurred to me that the detector that kept going off also happened to be a CO2 detector as well, and that that just might be the problem. After all CO2 does make you very sleepy and I was in fact VERY sleepy.

A call was made to the dispatcher and then to the fire department. We were told to take the dog and get out of the house. It's about 1:00 AM at this point. I really didn't feel like there was anything wrong and that the detector was just malfunctioning but I didn't want to wake up dead the next morning and thought better safe than sorry.

I had hoped that they would just bring one of the small pickup trucks that they have at the fire station all of the half block that they had to travel to our house. Oh no, no such luck. They turned down our street with a full sized fire engine and lights blazing (did I mention that there are no street lights on our street. So much for not making a scene). Then they pulled out the medical gear and tested our blood CO2 levels which were of course at 0. They checked all the rooms, the dryer, furnace and water heater all of which were within normal ranges.

All of the firemen were very kind and told us that we did the right thing by calling, even it was just the smoke detectors that malfunctioned.

I think back on it now and I'm so glad that nothing serious happened because we probably would have been dead before we could even figure out what was going on and get out of bed! I'm also glad to know that our smoke detectors all work and that we wired them correctly. Even if they are just a little sensitive!