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CO detector prevents tragedy

When smoke filled the Alon family home on a winter’s night it was the loud beeping of the Visonic carbon monoxide (CO) detector that saved the sleeping family. Installed above a kerosene heater, the detector was activated when the heater malfunctioned – averting a potential tragedy.

Ami Alon is painfully aware of how close his family came to disaster. He was not home at the time; and his wife, Mari, and two children, aged three and five years, were sleeping. By the time Mari woke up and escaped the house with the children, the house was filled with deadly smoke. He says: “I do not want to think about what might have happened if we had not installed the CO detector.

“My wife had gone to bed particularly tired and at first she did not hear the beeps of the CO detector, installed next to our children’s room. Our son woke up and called my wife but she was sleeping very deeply and did not hear him, and soon after that he apparently fell back asleep. Then, as the beeping grew stronger, Mari woke up and suddenly realised it was the CO detector. It was only then that she understood what was happening. The house was full of smoke and it was difficult to breathe. Mari immediately grabbed the children, ran out of the house, and phoned me. I arrived five minutes later and found that the house was full of smoke.

The Visonic CO detector had been installed at the Alon house about six months before that night. As a standalone detector, it sounded an alert when carbon monoxide levels rose above a certain level. The volume of the beeping continually increased as the amount of CO increased and became more dangerous. If the detector had been connected to a Visonic security system, with connectivity to a monitoring service, the detector would also have activated an alert to the monitoring centre and to Ami’s mobile phone.

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