Family suffers gas fume poisoning

Five-month-old Matthew's cries woke up his parents

A family from Derby said they were lucky to be alive after being poisoned by carbon monoxide in their flat.

Claire Allinson, her boyfriend and their five-month-old son spent a night in hospital after collapsing in their home in Meadow Lane, Chaddesden.

The flat has only electric appliances and the gas is thought to have entered the building from outside.

Ms Allinson, 21, said: "When we got to hospital we had a high level of carbon monoxide in our blood."

She said she and her boyfriend Chris Tunstall were woken in the early hours of Monday by her baby Matthew's crying.

She said: "I tried to pick him up, shush him off back to sleep and I went really dizzy, really light-headed, I could feel my heart pumping in my head.

"Then my boyfriend picked him up, started going really dizzy, had to sit on the bed. I was then sick.

"For (the baby) to wake up twice in one night was really unusual and a lot of the other residents have thanked us for taking note of his crying."

'Off the scale'

Ambulance staff called in firefighters, who checked carbon monoxide levels around the property, and found they were "off the scale", said Ms Allinson.

Eleven other residents also moved out.

Investigators are still trying to discover where the gas came from.

The family's landlord Ben Naylor said Severn Trent Water engineers and drainage specialists had been called out.

He said: "We're doing absolutely everything we can to try and get to the bottom of it."

Advertisement

Three people were taken to hospital