moodboard/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — One child is dead and at least five other children are hospitalized for apparent carbon-monoxide poisoning after they were found unconscious in the indoor-pool area of a Michigan hotel on Saturday.
Fire Department Capt. Don Wise in Niles, Michigan, told reporters that staff at the local Quality Inn and Suites found six children laying on the pool deck unresponsive and unconscious on Saturday. The staff members immediately opened the doors to the indoor-pool area and called 911, he said.
Wise said it’s unclear how long the children, who range in age from about 10 to 14, were unconscious before they were found.
First responders arrived on scene and evacuated the children, who were taken to area hospitals. They then went through each floor of the hotel to evacuate any remaining visitors and staff.
Quality Inn confirmed to ABC News that the entire hotel was evacuated.
“When we first went in with our [air] monitors, the monitors went off,” Wise said. “All the responders took a little bit more risk, but we had to get those kids out of there and into fresh air for their best chance at survival.”
One of the children was dead on arrival at Lakeland Hospital in Niles, a hospital spokesoman, Jessica Hines, told ABC News. She said the hotel is also treating a few hotel employees and first responders who are all expected to make a full recovery, she told ABC News.
Memorial Hospital of South Bend in Indiana, some 10 miles from the hotel in the southern Michigan city of Niles, told ABC News that the patients it is treating from the hotel are in critical condition.
A total of 12 people from the hotel were taken to the two hospitals, according to the fire department captain.
Wise said the highest carbon monoxide reading he saw in the pool area was 800 parts per million, far above the 50 ppm maximum that the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration recommends for workplace exposure eight hours per day, five days per week for a normal, healthy adult.
“That’s an extreme danger level,” the fire captain told reporters. “At those levels, they don’t have much time before they’re going to go unresponsive.”
Officials detected higher-than-normal carbon monoxide levels in other areas of the hotel, but not as dangerous as the level detected in the pool area, Wise said.
It’s unclear if there is a carbon monoxide detector in the hotel’s pool area. A mechanical engineer is on site investigating whether the pool heater was the cause of the dangerously high carbon monoxide levels.
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