ALLENTOWN, Pa. - Most of the children and adults rushed to area hospitals Tuesday have been released after being poisoned with carbon monoxide at an Allentown day care facility.
Twenty-seven children and five adults were sickened with carbon monoxide at the Happy Smiles Learning Center at 471 W. Wabash St. A spokesman with UGI utilities said a malfunctioning heating unit and blocked vent was to blame.
Brian Downs, a spokesman with Lehigh Valley Health Network, said 19 children and adults evacuated to two of its hospitals have been released after being treated. A spokesman for St. Luke's University Hospital Networks said all of their patients from daycare centers have also been released except for an adult still under observation.
Allentown Fire Department Capt. John Christopher said three children were transferred from the Lehigh Valley to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Andrew Miller, the head of pediatric emergency medicine for Lehigh Valley Health Network, says those children needed aggressive care and were transferred for treatment with hyberbaric oxygen. Others were also transported to the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. The hospital would not release their status.
Christopher says the daycare staff may not have recognized the symptoms initially because kids are dropped off very early in the morning and were already disoriented. There were no carbon monoxide detectors at the facility.
“A lot of time, they go in there and they go to sleep right away,” he said. “So you can kind of see why it wasn’t noticed right away.”
He said paramedics were summoned to the daycare center around 7:30 a.m. Tuesday for a report of an unconscious child.
“When our guys went in to tend to the child, one of the monitors on the equipment started going off alerting us to the fact there could be CO in the air," Christopher said. "We went out and got the meters off the engine and did in fact find very high levels.”
Christopher said readings of 700 parts per million of carbon monoxide triggered an immediate evacuation of 27 students and 5 staff members inside the facility. He called the readings a "potentially lethal situation."
“EMS on scene upgraded to a mass casualty incident, bringing their command staff here. They immediately set up command, set up triage and started treating patients. As of last count, 28 patients were transported to four hospitals. All patients that were transported were listed as stable,” Christopher said in the morning.
The LVHN patients were treated with 100% oxygen for at least four to six hours while their CO levels were closely monitored, Miller said.
By late afternoon, some of those sickened had been discharged but others were transferred to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia for more aggressive treatment, Miller said.
"It is important to provide quick treatment to replace the CO in the blood with oxygen as excessive inhalation of CO is associated with acute and long-term consequences, including damage to the brain and heart, which require a lot of oxygen," he said in a statement.
The fire department's Christopher said the daycare facility did not have carbon monoxide detectors and referenced recent legislation passed requiring the installation of fire safety equipment for family child-care facilities.
The legislation, an update to the Fire and Panic Act, was signed into law by Gov. Tom Wolf on July 7, 2022, putting a 60-day compliance window into effect.
Separately, Allentown communications manager Genesis Ortega said a letter was sent to daycare facilities earlier this year regarding updates to Child Care Ordinance No. 15791, which was amended and approved by Allentown City Council on Feb. 16, 2022.
That ordinance requires all home, group and child care centers to install carbon monoxide detectors, including detectors "in the vicinity of every fossil-fuel-burning heater or appliance."
The window of compliance for that ordinance extends to Oct. 27, 2022, Ortega said. The center passed a city inspection this past July.
Of the documents posted on the front door of the facility as of mid-day Tuesday, one was a 'Notice of Suspension' from the city's Bureau of Health, indicating the daycare was already out of compliance with additional ordinances. The center was also tagged by the city's Buildings and Standards office as an 'Unsafe Structure'.
Oretga said those violations were unrelated to carbon monoxide detectors, and the city is not releasing additional information due to the "ongoing investigation."
A voicemail left with the center's phone number was not returned.
Joseph Swope, media relations manager for UGI, said there was no gas leak at the facility.
“We did a thorough investigation of that. We investigated the cause of the carbon monoxide and the cause was a malfunctioning heating unit and blocked venting system. The gas was shut off and the heating unit would have to be red-tagged, meaning the heating unit can’t be turned back on until repairs are made.”
According to the Kidde, a leading manufacturer of fire safety products, carbon monoxide exposure is classified as "dangerous" at levels greater than 101 parts per million if someone is experiencing symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning. Levels comparable to that in the day care facility would lead to dizziness, nausea, and convulsions within 45 minutes, the Kidde website says. The situation would be life-threatening after several hours of exposure.
Are you at risk of carbon monoxide exposure? Learn more about how you can keep yourself safe from this invisible killer.
