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January 14, 2009 04:52 AM UTC
43 Comments
Just reading the article damn near had me in tears. Another family, the one that the bill is named after, lost four members of their family. Four. A lousy 20 bucks seems a small price to pay.
And if you don’t want to get pissed off, skip reading the comments after the article. Some of pretty hard to swallow.
It isn’t clear from the article. It does say this, though:
So if this had been law before she’d signed her lease, the detector would’ve been there.
I wonder why old tenants are left to suffer the whims of fate.
The bill only requires the upgrade to be made to current rentals after the current tennant leaves.
If they move to another rental, the new place will also have had to have upgraded.
$10 at Big Lots. Best money I’ve spent. I think I’ll buy one for my parents’ house.
…stop the presses
They’ll never buy them. It’s an expense, and they have to go out to buy or order them.
Frankly, I wish we didn’t have to mandate them. We regulate and mandate the hell out of people, and for common sense things.
People should know that these devices can save their lives. But I also believe that property managers aren’t interested in going too far out of their way to protect tenants.
A good legislative kick in the ass is often the only way.
to buy one for my house. I rent the property and it’s a fairly old house (an old 1920’s boarding house.) Probably long overdue but this article did the trick.
blame the people who pay them.
Lobbyists just do what their clients pay them to do.
No different than a lawyer retained by a client to look out for the clients interests.
Yes, I am sensitive about this. There are some scumbag lobbyists and every one on the rail knows who they are, but there are also some very honorable people who simply do the best they can for their clients and there is nothing wrong with that.
I joke!
I’m curious if you’ve ever bothered to read the original Shakespeare that the “kill all the lawyers” phrase comes from? It might be a good idea, I won’t spoil it for you but I’ll just say that context matters.
all I did was (almost) quote the line from Shakespeare. I didn’t supply a definition. And, anyway, any non-philistine knows the context of the original quotation. Nonetheless, I saw an opportunity for a carefree comment and I took it. Don’t hurt yourself analyzing it.
I think it’s a very reasonable thing to require – and the cost is minimal.
Fire detectors are mandated, right? I’m really asking, but am comfortable assuming. Which emergency are you more likely to wake up for; a loud fire with lungs full of irritating smoke (these detectors are for the quickest possible warning, not b/c they think you’ll sleep through it), or the gas that puts/keeps you asleep?
…were local fire code issues, not a state law. But maybe I’m all wrong.
Advise from a former fire chief: place one in your bedroom at the same height as your head in bed. Then, if you are asleep and CO rises to that level you’ll be awakened.
We have ours on the floor by the heat vent, figuring that’s where the CO would start to accumulate.
But we haven’t gotten them for our rental properties, figuring that the renters can get them for themselves. I’m going to Costco tomorrow, though. It could be the best $20 (or $25, I think that’s closer to the price) I ever spent. I cannot imagine how it would feel to be the owner of the apartment building where Ms. Johnson died, and I will make sure I’m never in that position.
What, seriously, I’m the only asshole on this blog who thought of that?
Rep. Soper (D) carried this bill last year and it failed. There were repubs and dems that voted NO last year. It took the deaths of an entire family and Ms. Johnson over the last couple months to get folks to vote the right way this time. Thank you Representative John Soper. I sure wish some of your peers down there would have got it right the first time. (John Soper is not the blog type so I doubt he will read this)
Probably not. Anyway, when Adam was still on the radio version and callers had a smoke detector warning about low batteries (they beep), he’d stop the conversation to count the seconds in between beeps and figure out how long the detector had been beeping. In some cases it’d be like 6 months. Adam: “Where is it?” Caller: “Above our bed.” Small wonder they needed “love” advice.
KROQ was the only station I listened to back in the eighties and nineties. I loved it.
I once won a contest for being the oldest listener. Sigh.
It’s anecdotes like that one – and the election of GW – why I am such a cynic about humans.
Congratulations on being an old cynic. I aspire to be.
Shouldn’t it be the responsibility of the individual to put these detectors in their own homes?
Ok, its only 20 bucks, but isn’t that 20 bucks you could have spent yourself to keep yourself and your family safe? If we start by mandating this, where will it stop, fire extinguishers, inflammable building materials, direct hotlines to the fire department???
I am sorry that his daughter passed away due to carbon monoxide poisoning, however isn’t it his responsibility as a parent to ensure her safety?
I know I am going to get beat up on for this, but I believe that only government can do so much and at some point we have to take responsibility for our own saftety.
All of those things are already in place.
I live an in apartment and they do not provide a fire extinguisher for me (are they getting away with something?)
They do provide smoke alarms (daisy chained together, and when one goes bad they all go batshit) and I have augmented with my own fire extinguishers as well as carbon monoxide detectors because I value the safety of my family and feel like providing for their safety is my responsibility.
Am I crazy here in thinking that I have some responsibility and that others do as well?
Unregulated, then regulated, now just accepted.
I’m sure anyone would spend $20 if they knew it would, not could, would save their lives. Chances are it will never, ever go off. Why spend the twenty? That’s the thinking, not a real question.
I’d like to know more about the sources of monoxide. Other than a pinholed heat exchanger for a FAG (someone’s going to hit me for that) furnace, what? The BBQ grill in your living room?
I hope this law excludes non-FAG buildings.
You’re asking about the college kid, right? She didn’t have any gas appliances, the CO came from a repair that the apartment complex had made that afternoon (and clearly fucked up).
I’ll check for a story about that specifically, I’m feeling lazy just now.
Apparently a flue cap for the broiler in the basement was damage by wind. The cap was repaired, not changed, I guess that’s a no-no. There was another woman found while groggy besides the woman who died.
http://www.rockymountainnews.c…
I’m having trouble getting my head around a flue cap malfunctioning. It’s a static thing, I don’t think most flues even have them. See http://www.woodlanddirect.com/…
I mean, unless the repair person used the cap to plug the flue, I’m not sure how the compbustion products would not have continued on their merry way.
Tragic.
but they have to be placed every so many feet throughout the complex or building.
I do think that people should take responsibility for themselves, but this isn’t the issue to make a stand on. Also, with rental properties, the ability to add things is sometimes iffy in the lease. Take the family of four, I think that was a vacation home. You really aren’t allowed to put anything on the walls and would you for a weekend anyway? Do you take a detector into hotels? Rental agreements automatically have a requirement to reasonable safety measures. The responsibility logic works both ways here.
“I am sorry that his daughter passed away due to carbon monoxide poisoning, however isn’t it his responsibility as a parent to ensure her safety?” That’s more than a little out of line. How many college or grad students think about Carbon Monoxide?
I imagine that generally people aren’t aware of the threat Carbon Monoxide is, and still more that would trust blindly that their apartment is safe.
I bought a detector for my sister because of my own paranoia and distrust of her property management. I think, if anything, the recent deaths should put a focus on Carbon Monoxide in everyone’s homes and apartments.
A defective heat exchanger in the furnace? Something else?
Our oil burner is 63 years old. My folks put a monoxide detector in the bedroom some years ago as a CYA. The exchanger is cast iron, I’m sure, or it wouldn’t have lasted this long. It’s the cheaper steel ones that will pinhole.
And being an oil burner, even w/o an alarm one would likely notice that oil burning smell in the house.
Said something about the boiler cap being on too tight or something. The Carbon Monoxide was pushed right into her apartment.
I asked the clerk at the hardware store if he’d noticed an increase in sales recently.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “We can barely keep them in stock.”