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At 1am I was awake to let the dog out. Smelled onions, I sauté onions yesterday. I when back to bed was woken up sometime during 4 am hour. To a screaming alarm ADT called said CO alarm is going off evacuate the house. Our house was filled with natural gas. We are all ok.

We were sloppy about waiting till the battery indicator went off before replacing. I was told to do it at time change. So spring head is coming up.
We figured out we need to practice a plan.

Glad you are okay and thank you for the reminder!

Omg scary.

We have gone over a fire plan. Kids also had fire safety course in school. We have multiple smoke and CO detectors throughout the house. Feont door, kitchen, 2 in thr hall, in each bedroom, top of stairs, bottom of stairs and a few in the basement. Cant have to many.

Luckily if there's a fire stopping us from leaving bedrooms, each room has two windows and its close enough to thr ground We can jump.

I am so glad you are all ok!

From bitter experience:
Keep powerful and charged flashlights at key points in the house.
I’m not talking torch on your phone, but something more akin to bike-torches or tactical flashlights. I have several strategically placed in the house. I don’t often get angry but throw a fit if they are missing or displaced!

Some years ago I had a house fire that started when cooking-fat ignited in the kitchen. The flames reached the hood and ignited the filters and all the internal wirings and plastic. Plastic emits heavy black smoke and the fire burned through the electronics shorting all electricity in the house. Pitch-dark, no power, no lights and thick smoke…
I was fortunate enough to have a torch, and the beam was used as a guide through the smoke to help my kids get our pets out – as well as themselves.

Other than that… Definitely have a fire-plan in place and practice!

Edited thanks to Barcher

Wow Bigger. That's scary. Sorry that happened to you.

Two things I have learned.

1. Having a central (monitored) fire and CO alarm saves lives.

I was told that CO can incapacitate to the point people don't respond to alarms on their own. Systems that are monitored by people in a central place like a call center know if the CO detector goes off and can call for help for help for subscribers if that is part of the service you pay for.

2. Having regularly serviced (yearly for mine) fire extinguishers of the correct size and type in every room and multiples in shops and garage etc saves lives and prevents property damage.

We and friends have used our fire extinguishers on a tractor in a field, a tractor trailer in front of a business, and a driver's brakes that were on fire, and sparks that started firewood stacked by the fireplace on fire. To be fair, none of these events were caused by me and I was not thrilled by the $$$ it cost us to recharge the fire extinguishers after the events that ours were used for. But property was saved and people were kept safer.

You need to know how to pull the pin and use them and, yes, they are $$$$ and a pain to take them in to be checked and serviced but when you need them you aren't wishing you had them.

[This message edited by Shehawk at 12:05 AM, Tuesday, March 8th]

Bigger, glad you got all to safety.

Our issue was natural gas. The alarm didn’t wake my daughter or her fiancé up that was me. My first reaction was to say Alexa turn on the light.

In addition to the flashlights we are going to keep leashes in the bedroom for the dogs. My husband learned when they say evacuate help your wife get everyone out of the house don’t run around turning on lights. Turning on the lights can blow the house up. My daughter learned go out the sliding door in your bedroom don’t come to the front door.

I really felt frightened and ignorant about what to do if the co monitor goes off also our failure to have a plan.

A few comments as scientist:

Having a central (monitored) fire and CO2 alarm saves lives.

I hate to nitpick, but others are reading and they might get confused. You should actually be worried about carbon monoxide (CO)... you don't really have to worry about carbon dioxide (CO2).

Carbon monoxide is a by-product from incomplete combustion of fuel. It's colorless, odorless... and it will make you sleepy at an intermediate level... but it will kill you at high levels.

(an aside, you really don't have to worry about CO if you don't have any combustion in your home (gas furnace, gas stove, gas clothes dryer). For example, a house with all electrical appliances has very little chance of having issues with CO (especially if there is a detached garage).

Carbon dioxide is the product of complete combustion. We exhale carbon dioxide when we breathe. Carbon dioxide is relatively harmless (although it is a major contributor to global climate change). Carbon dioxide is also a useful surrogate for how much (or how little) ventilation there is in a room. For example, the carbon dioxide levels in a school classroom increase significantly when classes are in session. I mention this because during the COVID pandemic... there has been a lot of focus on schools and classrooms (and other crowded, indoor spaces) on carbon dioxide levels. There is nothing directly concerning about high carbon dioxide levels in a room, except that these rooms would also be more likely of a place for COVID to spread (i.e., better ventilation = lower CO2 levels = less likely to get COVID).

As a former handyman who worked for a rental management company (i.e., about 20% of my job was making sure that rental units that we managed had proper smoke and CO detectors):

Having a central (monitored) fire and CO2 alarm saves lives.

You should, in theory, change the batteries in your smoke and CO detectors twice per year.

Personally, I recommend getting the units that do not have batteries to change at all. They have an internal lithium battery that lasts 10 years, which is the life of the detector itself. This is another safety tip: replace all smoke and CO detectors that are older than 10 years.

Finally, and this is more obscure but it's 100% true (I promise!).

The type of smoke detector that you get is VERY IMPORTANT. There are two types currently on the market: photoelectric and ionization. YOU WANT PHOTOELECTRIC. YOU DO NOT WANT IONIZATION.

Ionization smoke detectors are an older technology... they are the ones that are super easy to trigger when you burn your toast. This is actually about half of the problem with these detectors... they are easily triggered and people disconnect them. Meaning, they are left without any smoke detector at all. The other problem with ionization detectors is that they are not quickly triggered by actual fires (i.e,. they are better at detecting your toast burning than your house being on fire). According to the data that I have seen, the survival rate of people in homes with ionization detectors is about 50% when there is a major house fire.

In contrast, photoelectric detectors are not easily triggered by nuisance events like burned toast. They are also much better at detecting real fires than ionization detectors. The data that I have seen is that the survival rate in homes with photoelectric detectors is about 95% when there is a major house fire.

And the really good news... ionization detectors and photoelectric detectors are about the same price. Another tip: there are combination detectors that use both technologies. These are more expensive (because they're effectively two-in-one detectors) but they do not perform better in genuine house fires than photoelectric-only detectors. So, I don't recommend these (i.e., more expensive but not better).

What surprised me the most was the speed of the fire. This happened in the evening, maybe at about 8pm and I smelt/heard the fire before the detectors went off. Maybe only a few seconds before. About 10 seconds after the detectors went off the electricity went off. About 30 seconds later the whole kitchen-, dining and living area was thick with toxic, black smoke.
We were all awake and the boys had our parrot and dog out right away. The fish… they had to fend for themselves...
Wife dialed 911 while I used a fire-blanket to move the burning pot off the stove-top to the floor and managed to smother the oil. By the time that was out – maybe 90 seconds after the alarm went off – there was so much smoke that I had to leave the embers and flames in the kitchen cabinets, hood and table-top and crawl out of the house – taking care not to stand up into the denser smoke.

Thank you for the information Barcher. I am calling ADT and asking them, what type of alarm we have.

Bigger that is a scary situation!

Wow Bigger. That really does sound scary.

A fire blanket?

I am going to Google that and also a fire ladder for the second floor bedrooms.