Nearly Killed by a Cob Cooker.

A couple of days ago I received the following email from an old friend – who nearly killed himself with carbon monoxide poisoning.

“For many years (since 2004) we have used a Cobb Cooker for cooking and heating at night when cold.These cookers use charcoal briquettes, and we have plenty of ventilation being our van is a pop-top.We ran out of briquettes prior to Merredin, so bought more, different type"

“Well at 0130 in the morning, got up for a drink of water, so passed the cooker which we had on the floor, noticed it was still glowing, so must have took a good lung full of fumes, I turned to walk back to bed and collapsed. Fell badly, split my little finger on right hand, the floor and myself was covered in blood (bloody aspirin). bruised both knees, hit my head, minor cuts there. The main thing was, I hit the wooden chair arm with my right side of my chest on the way down. I can't remember a bloody thing about it, waking up with the wife screaming. Went into shock, that took about an hour to go. That morning was not fit enough to travel, so just rested. Following day headed to Southern Cross, the hospital. No waiting straight in. Had an ECG and blood tests to rule out Heart Attack, everything ok there. They patched up the cuts etc. Then the doc came in to checkout my chest, luckily nothing broken, could have fracture(s) ribs.”

I hope this helps in making people aware of the dangers of running unflued heaters in unventilated enclosures