CO hospitalizes five

I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.

May 21, 1997

By Devlyn Brooks

Staff Writer

A broken furnace stack on a trailer house which allowed carbon monoxide to seep into the residence has left five Bemidji people hospitalized in the Twin Cities, authorities said Tuesday.

All of the residents are in their 20s, but their names could not be released because of data privacy laws, said Pat Kelly, a North Country Regional Hospital spokeswoman. The Bemidji Police Department and Fire Department reported they did not have the victims' names.

According to Firefighter Dick Tolman, the Fire Department responded to an 11:10 a.m. call at a trailer house in Skyline Village, a trailer park located on the northern edge of Bemidji, at which the occupants of the house seemed to have suffered from gas poisoning.

NCRH's Kelly said apparently one of the individuals woke in a groggy state and, when the individual could not arouse the roommates, called 911. When police officers arrived at the scene, the occupants of the house were outside and conscious, but officers transported the individuals to North Country Regional Hospital.

They were then transferred to Hennepin County Medical Center, which has a hyperbaric chamber used to defuse gas in the blood, Kelly said.

Tolman said the Fire Department found no gas leaks in the trailer house, but did find an "extremely" high level of carbon monoxide. A gas company later determined a broken vent stack was forcing the furnace's exhaust back into the trailer home.

Firefighters ventilated the house and checked it several more times before leaving, Tolman said. "We did what we could to air it out."