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OSSIAN
TRAGEDY AND RESCUE SCENE -- This house at 206 South Siebold St. at
Ossian’s west end is the location of Saturday’s carbon monoxide
fatality -- reported to have been from a generator run in the basement
to enable heat after electric power was disconnected at the house about
a week earlier. Others in the house also were overcome but were rescued
and brought out onto the drive for EMS attention as their lives were
saved by fast emergency actions after a fortunate suspicion of
something wrong in the pre-dawn episode.By JIM BARBIERI
Carbon monoxide is a silent killer.
An early Saturday home tragedy struck in Ossian, as 30-year-of David R. Bagwell died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
But it also turned over into a rescue operation in which the lives of four other overcome persons were saved.
The location was 206 South Siebold St., Ossian -- the first house on the west side of Siebold south of where West LaFever Street comes to a dead end at the town’s west end.
Bagwell’s stepfather, Bob Nick, was the reported resident at the address and was one of those rescued, as were a woman friend of the resident and her daughter plus a son of the resident, it was related by authorities.
The names of the rescued were Bob Nick and Mike Nick, and Amy Brickley and Doris Brickley, the coroner’s office said.
Wells County Deputy Coroner Kent Gilbert, who also is the Ossian fire chief, said Sunday that a preliminary report from an autopsy at St. Joseph Hospital in Fort Wayne gave confirmation of the death cause being carbon monoxide poisoning.
Deputy Coroner-Fire Chief Gilbert said he learned that the electricity had been turned off at this residence about a week ago and that occupants had been using a generator in the basement to provide heat.
Apparently the generator was not vented or adequately so and emitted the carbon monoxide, Gilbert indicated.
By available reports Sunday, all of the other occupants were recovering. They were indicated young adult to mid-adult ages. There were no young children, Gilbert indicated. Gilbert said they were taken by ambulances to St. Joseph Hospital in Fort Wayne. As fire chief, he said he thought of possible medical helicopter transport but with no close-by landing spot in that darkness period, it seemed the ambulance transport was the way to go.
Gilbert said that those found alive in the house were overcome and partially conscious to unconscious when found and appeared to have lost mobility.
Making possible these lives being saved was a phone call made by Amy Brickley, one of the occupants, who called a Fort Wayne acquaintance.
People who are being affected by carbon monoxide gradually lose control of their senses and because Brickley was speaking in an usual or confused way, the acquaintance fortunately drove to the scene.
Finding the occupants overcome in the house, he ran to a neighboring house to phone for emergency help. That call was about 4:30 a.m. Saturday.
Ossian Police Officer Brian McClish was first on the scene, and summoned the Ossian Fire Department. Quickly summoned then were two more EMS ambulances in addition to the one already responding, related Gilbert,
Officer McClish and the man from Fort Wayne already had been getting people out of the house as firemen arrived.
The victims were taken out onto the drive leading to Siebold Street for the house’s attached garage to the north side of the house. EMS attendants assisted the surviving victims there.
Gilbert said the first thing firefighters did was to check the house thoroughly to be sure there were no more occupants.
Gilbert noted that as firefighters initially went in without air masks, not wanting to wait another second with lives possibly at stake, some of the firefighters became lightheaded or dizzy from the carbon monoxide even in the brief period of exposure.
According to Gilbert, the occupants were in bed clothes and in various locations of the house which has a main floor and a basement plus a half attic. No one was on the upper level.
All had been on the main floor as Gilbert understood it. Bagwell was on a couch in the living room, others were in bedrooms.
And one of the occupants, apparently, when still able to sense that poisonous air weakening them was probably coming from the generator, started for the basement to shut off the generator, Gilbert said he was told.
That subject didn’t make it -- getting only to the top of the basement steps before being immobilized right there.
That subject was rescued at the top of those steps later, just in time, and revived when removed outdoors.
Firefighters were not sure about how to disconnect the generator immediately amid the perilous conditions, so they carried it outside with the cord still attached and shut it off from there.
Gilbert said the house had been aired out for about 30 minutes and still had the door open after the rescue before he could get time for a carbon monoxide detector test, which he said still showed a carbon monoxide level of 468 parts per million.
“This is much higher than I’ve ever seen before,” declared Gilbert. He said a reading of 35 parts per million can be dangerous over a period of time and often will trip detectors.
“But 468 parts, you don’t want to be there,’’ the fire chief-deputy coroner told this reporter.
From what Gilbert could learn at the scene Saturday, he said it was an hour from the time of Brickley’s call to the Fort Wayne acquaintance until the time that the fire department was responding at the scene. By that time, victims were just being brought out of the house by police and others.
For the fatality victim, there were no indicated life signs. For others it was believed just in time.
Fire department units were on the scene for over two hours, the report said
Deputy Coroner Gilbert agreed with others that there may be more people having power cutoffs soon in a period before severe cold when utilities are not to do cutoffs.
Also the ice storm of last winter and other power outages have brought about increased use of generators.
More public education on generators and on getting arrangements to prevent utilities and heat shutoffs may be next.
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