Take steps to make sure home is safe

This will be an especially meaningful Thanksgiving Day for me and my husband, Bill Berg.

We returned Sunday, Nov. 11, from three days out of town. About a half-hour after arriving home I began to feel dizzy and soon passed out. A few minutes later, while talking to the 911 dispatcher, Bill also collapsed.

Unknowingly, we had walked into a home filled with carbon monoxide. But for Bill’s few minutes of additional consciousness we very likely would not have survived.

Instead Sagle emergency crews responded quickly, and, with the assistance of neighbors who saw them arrive, were able to revive us, throw open the doors, turn off all the valves in the home’s mechanical room and get us to Bonner General Hospital.

After a night at BGH sleeping with an oxygen mask we were able to return home by late Monday morning. There we found a new carbon monoxide monitor/alarm on our kitchen counter. It was left by the Sagle Fire Department crews who came to the house after the ambulance departed to make sure it would be safe for our return.

There is an important lesson here: BE SURE YOUR HOME IS SAFE. Foolishly, we did not have a CO monitor. We do now, thanks to the fire department and the few extras Bill has purchased.

And here’s another lesson: Our fire departments are supported by local taxes. We got full value. Government services come in handy when you least expect it.

You think this can’t happen to you. But it can. We don’t know the cause of the failure in our home venting system, but it happened.

Instead of musing about “the tragedy that might have been” we are putting renewed energy into being alive and, at least for now, celebrating every single day as if it were Thanksgiving Day.

Atop our list of people to thank are the Sagle first responders, the emergency room crew at Bonner General, our friends in the Martin Bay-Glengary Bay-Bottle Bay area and others scattered throughout Sandpoint and Bonner County. You know who you are.

Thank you! It’s great to be alive and to be in this wonderful place.

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Sagle