KCTV 525-year-old furnace, no CO detectors nearly kills family

An Overland Park family knows they are lucky to be alive today.

A 25-year-old faulty furnace and water heater and no carbon monoxide detectors nearly killed them.

"I just can't get that out of my system right now - how close we were to tragedy," Steve Goodwin said.

The ordeal for Goodwin and his wife and four children began about dinner time Monday.

"I started getting a bit of a headache and just played it off as nothing," Goodwin said.

But then his children began to get sick. The children are 25, 17, 12 and 10 years old. One daughter was throwing up. His wife, Lori, rushed to attend to her when she staggered, collapsed and became incoherent.

"Just out of it," Goodwin said.

Their furnace was leaking deadly fumes. And because the family didn't have any carbon monoxide detectors in the home, they had no advance warning until they got sick.

"I'm guilty of the carbon monoxide thing," Goodwin said. "I just didn't take it seriously and I very well could have woken up with five dead people in the house this morning."

Overland Park Fire Department spokesman Jason Rhodes said carbon monoxide detectors are crucial.

"You've got to have something that can alert you to the presence of the gas before it's a problem because it's odorless, it's tasteless and it's invisible," he said.

The average life of a furnace is 15 to 17 years. A CO detector is good for five years and needs to be checked regularly.

A Lenexa family went through a similar ordeal in December. Click here to read the Millers' story.

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