Dozens of people were hospitalized after being exposed to high levels carbon monoxide at an Allentown day care facility Tuesday morning. Exposure was cause by a malfunctioning heating unit and blocked vents, officials said.
Stephanie Sigafoos / LehighValleyNews.com
Stephanie Sigafoos / LehighValleyNews.com
Dozens of people were hospitalized after being exposed to high levels carbon monoxide at an Allentown day care facility Tuesday morning. Exposure was cause by a malfunctioning heating unit and blocked vents, officials said.
Thirty-two people were hospitalized — most of them children — after being exposed to excessively high levels of carbon monoxide at an Allentown day care facility Tuesday morning.
Several of the sickened children transported from the Happy Smiles Learning Center at 471 W. Wabash St. were unresponsive before arriving at the hospital, a pediatric emergency doctor said.
Exposure was caused by a malfunctioning heating unit and blocked vents, fire department officials said. The City of Allentown has deemed the structure unsafe, according to signs posted on the front door.
Lehigh Valley Health Network received 19 of the patients suffering from carbon monoxide inhalation. They ranged in age from several months to 10 years old and had blood levels of carbon monoxide three to 10 times higher than normal, said Dr. Andrew Miller, LVHN’s chief of pediatric emergency medicine.
All were considered to be stable, said Allentown Fire Department Capt. John Christopher.
He said paramedics were summoned to the day care center around 7:30 a.m. for a report of an unconscious child.
“When our guys went in to tend to the child, one of the monitors on the equipment started going off alerting us to the fact there could be CO in the air,” Christopher said. “We went out and got the meters off the engine and did in fact find very high levels.”
Christopher said readings of 700 parts per million of carbon monoxide triggered an immediate evacuation of 27 students and 5 staff members inside the facility. He called the readings a “potentially lethal situation.”
“EMS on scene upgraded to a mass casualty incident, bringing their command staff here. They immediately set up command, set up triage and started treating patients. As of last count, 28 patients were transported to four hospitals. All patients that were transported were listed as stable,” Christopher said in the morning.
The LVHN patients were treated with 100% oxygen for at least four to six hours while their CO levels were closely monitored, Miller said.
By late afternoon, some of those sickened had been discharged but others were transferred to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for more aggressive treatment, Miller said.
“It is important to provide quick treatment to replace the CO in the blood with oxygen as excessive inhalation of CO is associated with acute and long-term consequences, including damage to the brain and heart, which require a lot of oxygen,” he said in a statement.
The fire department’s Christopher said the day care facility did not have carbon monoxide detectors and referenced recent legislation passed requiring installation of fire safety equipment for family child-care facilities.
The legislation, an update to the Fire and Panic Act, was signed into law by Gov. Tom Wolf on July 7, 2022, putting a 60-day compliance window into effect.
Separately, Allentown communications manager Genesis Ortega said a letter was sent to day care facilities earlier this year regarding updates to Child Care Ordinance No. 15791, which was amended and approved by Allentown City Council on Feb. 16, 2022.
That ordinance requires all home, group and child care centers to install carbon monoxide detectors, including detectors “in the vicinity of every fossil-fuel-burning heater or appliance.”
The window of compliance for that ordinance extends to Oct. 27, 2022, Ortega said.
Of the documents posted on the front door of the facility as of mid-day Tuesday, one was a ‘Notice of Suspension’ from the city’s Bureau of Health, indicating the day care was already out of compliance with additional ordinances. The center was also tagged by the city’s Buildings and Standards office as an ‘Unsafe Structure’.
Sarah Mueller / LehighValleyNews.Com
Signs posted on the door of the Happy Smiles Learning Center in Allentown on Tuesday include a notice of an ‘Unsafe Structure’ and suspension of day care operations.
Oretga said those violations were unrelated to carbon monoxide detectors, and the city is not releasing additional information due to the “ongoing investigation.”
A voicemail left with the center’s phone number was not returned.
Joseph Swope, media relations manager for UGI, said there was no gas leak at the facility.
“We did a thorough investigation of that. We investigated the cause of the carbon monoxide and the cause was a malfunctioning heating unit and blocked venting system. The gas was shut off and the heating unit would have to be red-tagged, meaning the heating unit can’t be turned back on until repairs are made.”
According to the Kidde, a leading manufacturer of fire safety products, carbon monoxide exposure is classified as “dangerous” at levels greater than 101 parts per million if someone is experiencing symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning. Levels comparable to that in the day care facility would lead to dizziness, nausea, and convulsions within 45 minutes, the Kidde website says. The situation would be life-threatening after several hours of exposure.
Of the 19 treated by LVHN, 14 children and two adults went to the Cedar Crest campus and three other children were taken to Lehigh Valley Hospital – 17th Street, Miller said.
Symptoms included headache, dizziness and nausea.
Exactly how many had to be transferred to Philadelphia hospitals was not disclosed. Miller said they would be treated with hyperbaric oxygen.
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