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My Husband And Daughter Died In Our House On A Saturday Morning In April. We Had A CO Detector On The Wall. The Investigator Told Me We Were Missing The One That Would Have Caught It.
"If your home has gas service of any kind — please read every word before tomorrow morning."
— Rachel S., Surviving Wife
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The Phone Call That Started Everything
Why I'm Writing This
My name is Rachel. I'm a 41-year-old elementary school teacher.
I am writing this because my husband Michael and my 11-year-old daughter Lily were killed on April 12th of last year in our home.
They died in a natural gas explosion that took the entire house with them.
I was the only family member who survived because I had left for a coffee with my mother twenty minutes before the explosion.
I am writing this in the hope that another family reads it and understands what I did not understand.
Until I lost half my family,
I did not know there was a category of detector specifically designed to catch what killed them.
The CO detector on our wall did not catch it.
The CO detector was not designed to catch it.
Nobody had ever told us that.
Please read every word.
My husband Michael was 43. He worked as a financial analyst.
Our daughter Lily was 11.
She had just started learning to play the cello. She was reading the entire Harry Potter series for the second time.
She had her first crush on a boy in her class and would not stop talking about him.
We had owned our house for seven years.
A four-bedroom colonial in a neighborhood I had grown up in. Two miles from where my parents lived.
We had natural gas service. A gas furnace, a gas water heater, a gas range, and a gas dryer.
When we moved in, the previous owner — an older couple who had lived there for 22 years — had given us a binder of home maintenance records.
Everything was documented. Everything appeared to be in order.
We installed a CO detector in our hallway during the first month. We checked the battery every spring when the time changed.
We tested the alarm. It worked correctly.
We thought we were doing everything right.
We were doing half of what we should have been doing.
We did not know there was another half.
The Saturday Morning
I was supposed to meet my mother for coffee that Saturday at 9 AM.
Michael was working from home that weekend on a quarterly report due Monday.
Lily had a soccer game scheduled for noon and was sleeping in.
I left the house at 8:42 AM.
The drive to the coffee shop is six minutes from our house.
I was sitting at a table waiting for my mother at 8:51 AM when I heard the explosion.
I knew immediately. I cannot explain how I knew. I just knew.
My mother arrived at 8:55 AM and I was already in my car driving home.
I could not get to my street. The road was blocked by emergency vehicles by the time I arrived at 9:04 AM.
A police officer told me I could not pass. I told him my husband and daughter were home.
He had me wait in his cruiser for forty minutes before someone came to talk to me.
I do not remember that hour clearly.
What I remember is being told there had been a natural gas explosion.
There were two confirmed casualties. The house was no longer standing.
What The Investigator Found
The lead investigator on the case was a man named Daniel.
He had been doing this for over twenty years.
He came to my parents' house six weeks after the funeral.
He sat at the kitchen table with my mother and me and he explained what had happened in our home.
He had walked through the debris field with the ATF team.
He had identified the source of the leak.
A flex line connecting our gas dryer had a crack in it.
A hairline crack — no more than a millimeter wide.
The crack had been there for an estimated nine to fourteen months.
Gas had been leaking into our basement at a slow but steady rate for somewhere around a year.
In winter, our basement was drafty.
The leaking gas dispersed too quickly to accumulate to dangerous levels.
In spring, when we closed the windows and started running the air conditioning,
the basement sealed up. The gas began to accumulate.
By that Saturday morning, the basement was at approximately 6 percent LEL — within the explosive range.
Michael had gone downstairs at 8:48 AM to retrieve a stack of file folders for his quarterly report.
He turned on the basement light at the top of the stairs.
The light switch sparked.
The explosion took out the entire ground floor and partially collapsed the second floor.
Lily was sleeping in her bedroom directly above where Michael had been standing.
Neither of them would have suffered.
The investigator told me that as if it were a comfort.
It was not a comfort.
The Detector We Did Not Have
After Daniel walked me through what had happened, he asked me a question.
"Did you have a CO detector in the house?"
I told him yes. We had checked it just a month before. It was working correctly.
He nodded. Then he told me something I have never been able to stop thinking about.
"The CO detector you had would not have alarmed during this leak. CO detectors do not detect natural gas.
They are completely different categories of devices."
I did not understand at first.
He explained that natural gas is methane and CO is carbon monoxide.
They are different molecules. They require different sensors.
The detector on our hallway wall — the one I had bought to protect my family,
the one I had checked the batteries of, the one I had trusted — was incapable of detecting the gas that was filling our basement.
It had not alarmed not because it was broken.
It had not alarmed because it had no way of knowing methane was present.
I had been protecting my family from one type of threat.
I had not protected them from the threat that actually killed them.
What I Found Out After
After Daniel told me about the difference between CO detectors and methane detectors,
I started researching.
I learned that the National Transportation Safety Board issued
a formal recommendation in 2019 that all residential buildings with natural gas service should have methane detectors installed.
The recommendation was issued after multiple fatal residential gas explosions,
including one in Maryland that killed seven people.
The recommendation went to all 50 state governors.
As of today, only Maine and New York City have acted on it.
48 states — including the state I live in — have done nothing.
I learned that natural gas industry lobbying groups have actively opposed state-level mandates for residential methane detection.
They have spent millions fighting requirements that would have saved my husband and daughter.
I learned that the cost of a residential combustible gas detector is approximately $80 to $150.
The cost of mandating them industry-wide would have been negligible compared to the cost of the lawsuits the industry has paid out for explosions like the one that killed my family.
I learned that the gas utility serving my home had been fined twice in the past decade for inadequate leak surveillance practices in residential neighborhoods.
I learned all of this in the months after I buried my husband and my daughter.
I had not known any of it before they died.
I am writing this because nobody told us.
The Detector I Have Now
After my husband and daughter died,
I moved out of our debris field and into a small apartment near my parents.
I bought a combustible gas detector for my apartment.
The unit I bought is called the Haven Steadfast 4-in-1.
It detects both combustible gas and CO in a single unit.
It displays both readings continuously on a screen.
It alarms at low concentrations — 0.5 to 1.0 percent LEL — long before any explosive concentration could develop.
I have one in my kitchen.
One by my bed.
I check the screens every morning when I wake up and every night before I go to bed.
Two zeros.
Two zeros every morning.
Two zeros every night.
That is what protection actually looks like.
That is what my family did not have.
The Offer
The Offer
Right now Haven is offering their best pricing:
2-Pack — $139 ($69.50 each) For your kitchen and your basement. The two rooms where slow gas leaks accumulate before ignition sources arrive.
4-Pack — $219 ($54.75 each) — MOST POPULAR Full home coverage. Kitchen, basement, utility room, hallway. Every level of your home where a flex line, fitting, or connection could fail.
8-Pack — $379 ($47.38 each) You and the families that love you. Your home, your parents', your adult kids', your in-laws'. Eight zones, one decision.
Every order includes:
✓ Free US Shipping
✓ 90-Day Money-Back Guarantee
✓ Lifetime Replacement Warranty
✓ Real-time LEL/PPM display + electrochemical sensor (early-warning thresholds)
Two Futures
You finish reading this article.
You either trust the CO detector on your wall — the one I now know cannot detect what killed my husband and
my daughter — or you add the second detector that the federal safety board has been recommending since 2019.
If your home has gas service of any kind — natural gas or propane — please understand that the CO detector on your wall is not protecting you from explosions.
The smell is unreliable. The CO detector is doing the wrong job.
The state where you live has not acted on the federal recommendation.
The utility cannot find a leak you do not call them about.
Future One: Trust the CO detector alone. Hope no slow leak develops in any of your gas connections.
Hope your aging appliances continue holding.
Hope you can smell what your nose may not actually detect.
Hope you are not the wife who comes home to find emergency vehicles blocking her street.
Future Two: Order Haven Steadfast 4-in-1 before tomorrow morning.
Mount one in every level of your home with gas service. Watch the screens stay at 0.0 — and know that if anything ever changes,
you have a 10x margin of safety to leave the house and call the utility before the basement reaches 6% LEL.
Michael couldn't.
Lily couldn't.
You still can.
(I linked the detector I use below)
PROTECT YOUR FAMILY BEFORE TOMORROW MORNING →
"Read Rachel's article and bought four Havens for my home. Two weeks in, the kitchen unit alarmed at 0.5% LEL. Loose connection on the gas range. Plumber fixed it in 20 minutes. Get the detector." — Vanessa H., Maryland
"My husband installs HVAC for a living. He bought a Haven for our home and one for his parents' the day after he read about Rachel's family. His parents' unit alarmed at 0.7% LEL the first week. Old gas dryer flex line. Get the detector for your parents." — Stephanie F., Connecticut
"Bought Haven for our cabin. We use propane, not natural gas. Doesn't matter — Haven detects both. Reading was 0.4% LEL in the kitchen the first night. Loose propane connection on the stove. Tightened it. Family didn't sleep in the cabin until the reading was zero. Get the detector." — Brandon E., Wisconsin
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If you aren’t taking Alpha BRAIN®, you are operating at a disadvantage.
Find out why.
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Note: Haven Steadfast is a residential combustible gas and carbon monoxide detector. If you suspect a gas leak in your home, leave the building immediately, do not operate any electrical switches, and call your utility's emergency line and 911. This article reflects the personal experience of the author.
For a limited time, you can save up to 50% when you purchase a multipack of Steadfast Haven.
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