I saw a Facebook clip of an entire apartment building watching the premier of House of the Dragon. You could see all the dark windows changing color at the same time.

So no. I’ve watched big premiers live. I know people are exactly in sync with me in the millions probably 😂

I’m sure you’re experienced and trained in the proper procedures and probably given the correct equipment to detect the build up of the gas and you’re trained to get out before you panic from symptoms. But that’s just risk mitigation. There’s still a chance. We had one gas company investigator die in the last like 30 years where I work. Way before me. The standard has ever since been that at the very minimum is the fire department being made aware of the response by the gas company. Even then maybe the Chief or the Squad will drive by with a detector quick and see if anything’s needed and then either call for more man power if needed or return to station and let the home owner wait for the company.

The guy died because he opened a door that he didn’t realize was a dumb waiter (that’s what they’re called, right?) to the 1st floor and he was on the 3rd. The chute was full of gas but the 3rd floor room wasn’t and things equalized and he went unconscious before he could make it back out. Had the fire department been just there outside and someone with an SCBA could’ve gotten it on him and then out? That would’ve been a near miss. Instead it was a change in protocol.

Remember, the fire department can go in service from the scene at any time once it’s deemed good. It’s one of their most common calls and they train to make it as safe as humanly possible so even if all they do is sit outside in the truck while you go in to shut off a line before going back to station, isn’t it nice to have help there already?

Oh that’s because of a different reason then. We went over that in the military because of the in vehicle fire suppression systems and now to treat injuries from that. Yeah it’s really easy. You prevent them. You aren’t saving someone that gets a lung full of freshly deployed high pressured co2 for gas suppression. Shit. There’s rough ways to die, that’s near the top of my list. It still doesn’t kill you because of overwhelming the bodies natural ph buffers but that’s because doing that takes too long. You inhale a full blast of that stuff and your lungs die in seconds from the mass damage done by the expansion of the gas as well as the pressure change of it. It’s similar to a flash freeze. This becomes toxic to the brain as well and causes bubbles and aneurisms to form.

Totally understand it, just saying not to worry. There’s plenty of people who seriously abuse the 911 system. I’m talking calling 911 because the remote to the TV fell off the bed and they can’t find it without getting up. If you’re not on a first name basis with the local 911 crews, then you’re not abusing the 911 system.

Also, as sad as it is, there is nothing that can really be done about 911 abuse. Yeah, it’s illegal and there’s well written laws that make it enforceable and punishable, but good luck finding someone who’s gonna have the balls to do it. Who’s going to arrest the crazy lady who keeps calling 911 because she overheard the ants in the wall plotting to resurrect Hitler and take over the world? The person who does that is gonna be the person who gets sued the next time that lady calls because she feels the ants crawling in her chest and it gets filtered to the police to investigate and they show up at the house and find her dead from a heart attack. As a result, they’d rather just continuously send us to investigate and send a cop along with us to check it out later.

Trust me, only reason I say to not think of fixing it is because people can be dumb under stress of emergencies. Look at grease fires and how many people burn down their kitchens because of it. A lot of those people see fire, panic, and do what they’ve been told their entire lives. Water makes fire go out. In this case, no. No it does not.

Off topic: when I typed that, the first thing that popped into my mind when i said “they do what they’ve been told to do their entire lives” was to stop, drop, and roll.

I can’t be the only one who realizes we were told and taught to stop, drop, and roll a whole lot for something that happens so rarely in our lives. I chock it up with other things I thought would be problems growing up, quick sand, piranhas, and the Bermuda Triangle.

There’s nothing wrong with calling 911 if you think you have an emergency. It’s better to be safer than sorry.

I’m a paramedic on a 911 truck in a small city in the Northeast of PA. We frequently get calls for things that make no sense or things that make you wonder why someone would call 911 for that. I actually had someone call 911 because the tip of their finger was throbbing. Of course if you have an exhausting and busy shift and then finally get to relax for a minute and have it interrupted by a 40 something year old complaining of pain in his finger, you’re gonna do some screaming and cursing at the ceiling as you respond, but you’re gonna go. You always will. This time I got there and walked in the door and the guy was drenched in sweat and ghostly white. Holds up his left hand and points to the tip of his ring finger. Says this hurts so bad I can’t breathe. Guy looked like death, so I asked “does anything else hurt?” Guy was like, not really. It’s just the finger. It’s like a bad tooth, the finger tip hurts so bad it’s like a lightning bolt up my arm and into my arm pit. That then shoots across my chest and around my back. But it starts in my finger so I dunno.

Guy was having a massive heart attack and called 911 saying his finger tip hurt to touch.

CO is almost identical to air so it entirely depends on the source. It will eventually evenly disperse but if it’s coming from a leak in the floor or a leak in the basement, it will build up along the floor and slowly dissipate into the air around

You should just call 911. This is one of those things that is just better to make a big deal of and let them tell you that you were wrong. You could walk around the house thinking, nothings wrong, the co alarm is faulty. When I’m actuality it’s building up along the floor and slowly climbing.

There needs to be something wrong with your body in order for CO2 to have that effect. It’s extremely good at buffering the carbon in your system, between respiratory drives and metabolic drives. You have to be exposed to such incredibly high levels for such a long time to overwhelm that system and even then, if you’re healthy, you just need fresh air and water. Your body will do the rest.

Usually a person with CO2 problems is someone with a problem of discharging it from the body. Respiratory or kidney failure type patients, certain types of cancers, muscular loss, or neurological injury patients. Hell, it’s more common for a lack of CO2 to be a deadly or life altering problem than it is too much because some long term respiratory patients become dependent on high CO2 levels in the body to breathe instead of being dependent on low O2 levels.

You were good until you started telling people to fix things. Do not do that. Do not try to do that. Ever. Your detector might go off in your living room on the main floor and you’re like, I got this. Let me go shut off the furnace and I should be good. Down the basement stairs we go anddddd we’re dead. Why? CO settles and becomes super concentrated very quickly. There’s a reason that the fire department wears their SCBA when venting and investigating CO call outs. Especially when there’s symptoms.

I don’t know if this changes in other countries or anything, but call 911 (emergency services) not your gas company.