By Derek Gentile
The Berkshire Eagle

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — A few months ago, according to Fire Chief Harry Jennings, his department received a potentially bad call: high levels of carbon monoxide in a house.

"It was nasty," Jennings said. "More than 400 parts per million — way above healthy levels. This was a family with kids and everything."

Fortunately, the house had a carbon monoxide detector.

"They were all OK," he said.

The cause of the buildup was a blocked chimney.

According to both The Associated Press and several local officials, carbon monoxide emergency calls have roughly doubled in the past year since state lawmakers passed a law requiring homes to install the alarms.

In the Albany area on Nov. 11, six people were hospitalized after a faulty furnace vented carbon monoxide into a house on 174 South Swan St.

The most high-profile case in Berkshire County happened in February, when a brother and sister on Dalton Avenue in Pittsfield were nearly overcome.

There were a total of 10,000 carbon monoxide-related calls statewide in 2006, compared with about half that amount in 2005.

Jennings said that sounds about right.

"We've had twice as many calls this year compared to last year," he said. "The volume is up significantly."

'Nicole's Law'
"Nicole's Law" was passed a few months after 7-year-old Nicole Garofalo died from carbon monoxide poisoning in her home after mounds of snow clogged a boiler vent in January 2005.

The law requires a battery-operated or plug-in detector with battery backup in homes where gasoline, oil, wood or propane are burned.

The law is enforced mainly on the sale or transfer of property. It also is enforced whenever a fire department is called to a home for an inspection, such as an addition.

Building inspectors statewide, such as assistant inspector Donald Fitzgerald of Lenox, say that every home or building that burns gas, oil or wood should have one.

"It's just common sense," Fitzgerald said. "If this happens in your home, you're going to go to sleep and never wake up."

Many still without detectors
State officials say that, although awareness has been raised for many homeowners in the past several months, many still have not installed the devices, which are priced at between $30 and $120.

Some of the confusion about carbon monoxide poisoning has come because some homeowners believe that if they replace their furnace, they will have less cause for worry.

Not so, according to local chimney sweeps.

"The big problem," said Steve Graves, owner of Sweep N' Scan Inc. of Pittsfield, "is that the new burners are so efficient that almost all the heat stays in the house."

Because of that, he said, the waste vapor vented from the burner no longer goes all the way up a chimney.

Instead, the gases cool and condense inside the chimney, in particular an older chimney, and eat away at the interior of the structure.

"You got this acidic water that condenses on the inside of chimneys and just chews it up," he said.

'No more grandfathering'
Graves said the state already is mandating chimney liners for new houses and soon will be mandating them for older chimneys as well.

"No more grandfathering: You're going to need a liner," he said.

The good thing is that the new laws are working, Graves said. His company used to install five liners a month. Now, he said, he does five a week.

He urged residents with furnaces, old or new, to get their chimneys checked.

"Every year we see cases of blocked chimneys that could be avoided if people checked them," he said.

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