When you stay at a hotel, you shouldn’t have to worry about whether you might be the victim of carbon monoxide poisoning, which could be deadly. However, all too often, hotels don’t even take basic precautions, and here’s the latest example of that (thanks to Jeff for flagging this).
Police body cam footage from hotel carbon monoxide evacuation
ABC15 Arizona has newly released body cam footage from an incident that dates back to October 16, 2023, at the Holiday Inn Express in Mesa, Arizona. Late at night, police roamed the hallways of the hotel to evacuate all guests, due to suspected carbon monoxide poisoning.
What prompted the evacuation is that a guest who was staying at the hotel had collapsed outside just minutes earlier. She was feeling so weak that she got in the elevator to go outside, and she could no longer stand. Her husband was feeling similar symptoms.
Mesa Fire investigators found the cause of the carbon monoxide leak was the new tankless water heaters that the hotel had just installed. Some of the guests are now suing the hotel and the independent contractor who installed them, claiming the water heaters were “improperly, carelessly and illegally installed,” and were “venting carbon monoxide inside the property rather than to the outside of the property.”
For what it’s worth, the Mesa Fire report didn’t directly blame the installation, but it’s suggested that photos taken by Mesa Fire illustrate the failure, with the lack of venting. It’s worth noting that both the hotel and contractor who installed the water heaters denied the allegations in the lawsuit.
What’s even wilder is that emergency crews were called to the hotel the day before this incident, with reports of “sick people.” But it may even go back longer than that — the police report suggests that the hotel manager told police officers that fire crews were there “several weeks for similar calls for service, with people being transported to the hospital.”
Fortunately in this case, no one died. However, it’s worth noting that carbon monoxide deaths at hotels do happen. For example, in 2023, two guests died at Hyatt’s Rancho Pescadero in Baja California Sur, in a case of carbon monoxide poisoning (the hotel was rebranded as a Kimpton following the incident).
Why didn’t the hotel have carbon monoxide detectors?
What’s so awful about any sort of carbon monoxide incident is how easily preventible it is. Carbon monoxide can’t be seen or smelled, yet carbon monoxide detectors are super cheap, and you’d think they’d be as standard as smoke alarms. So, why didn’t the hotel have these installed?
In Mesa’s fire code, carbon monoxide detectors are required in hotels with “fuel burning appliances,” which would include tankless water heaters. However, the city said a carbon monoxide alarm was not required in the guest rooms in this case, since the water heaters were in the boiler room.
Per a statement from the city, “a carbon monoxide detector wasn’t required because there’s no direct connection between the fuel-burning appliance and the occupied space where CO could enter.” Right, except… well, you know…
For what it’s worth, the hotel was issued a code violation for not having a carbon monoxide detector in the room with the tankless water heaters, after the incident.
While the obvious issue here is the lack of taking precautions with installing carbon monoxide detectors, I’d argue that an equally big problem is the complete lack of staff training when it comes to safety. So the hotel manager noticed that people were mysteriously becoming sick for weeks, and didn’t actually do anything about it? There’s no training where people mysteriously becoming sick might suggest that there’s a carbon monoxide issue?
It really makes you wonder if it makes sense to travel with your own carbon monoxide detector, given that they’re cheap and portable. I’m not usually someone who is paranoid, but this just seems like an area where the hospitality industry is failing people, because we see these stories time and again.
Bottom line
A couple of years ago, a Holiday Inn Express in Mesa, Arizona, had a carbon monoxide incident, and new body cam footage has just been released of the evacuation. New tankless water heaters had been installed at the hotel, and it seems there was an issue with venting.
Carbon monoxide detectors weren’t required in the rooms since the fuel-burning appliances were in the boiler room, though that seems like a questionable approach. I think the biggest issue here is that the manager reports that people had been getting sick for weeks, yet that didn’t seem to raise any concerns with hotel staff.
Is anyone else wondering if it might be time to start traveling with a carbon monoxide detector?
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