Carbon monoxide poisoning kills boy

The Daily Inter Lake

A 17-year-old Creston-area boy died from accidental carbon monoxide poisoning Sunday morning.

The boy was Ian Scott Hineman.

His father, whose name was not released Sunday, was overcome by the same carbon monoxide, but survived.

The boy volunteered to sleep in his family's guest house in case that its pipes broke during the weekend's low temperatures, said Deputy Coroner Sgt. Ernie Freebury of the Flathead County Sheriff's Office in a press release.

Hineman told his parents that the propane furnace for a hot tub in the house was not working. His parents told him to shut off the gas valve, turn off the furnace and put insulation in the furnace's exhaust vent to keep out cold air.

The boy blocked the exhaust vent, but did not turn off the gas and the furnace, the deputy coroner's report said. The guest house filled with carbon monoxide.

His father found the boy in the basement at about 8:30 p.m. Sunday, and called 911.

A Sheriff's Office dispatcher gave the father cardio-pulmonary resuscitation instructions over the phone. The dispatch center summoned the Creston Fire Department, a Kalispell Fire Department ambulance, the ALERT helicopter and deputies.

Over the phone, the father told the dispatcher that he smelled gas and felt faint.

The dispatcher told the father to grab his son and get immediately out of the house. But the father lost consciousness after less than 10 minutes in the basement.

Creston firefighters - wearing self-contained breathing equipment - arrived and pulled the father and son from the guest house.

Firefighters tried to measure the carbon monoxide levels in the house, but found the levels were higher than the instruments could measure, Freebury wrote.

The ALERT helicopter flew the boy to Kalispell Regional Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. The Kalispell ambulance took the father to the hospital, where he was recovering Sunday.