Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Prevention Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I rise not really in opposition to H.R. 1796, the Residential Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Prevention Act--in fact, parts of this legislation I am very much in favor of, particularly regarding the encouragement in the grant program to try to help people to know of what the gentleman from Maryland just said in regard to the danger of carbon monoxide, which is colorless and odorless. It causes far too many poisonings and, indeed, deaths. I think, 170 Americans each year. One would be too many, Madam Speaker.

I question, somewhat, the necessity of making the standards for the detectors going from a voluntary standard to a mandatory standard.

But in regard to encouraging widespread use of the detectors, not only in places of business but, absolutely, in a home setting where a lot of times you have got these generators because of a power outage or camping equipment that, you know, is misused or malfunctions and it leads to these tragedies that we are trying to avoid.

I absolutely commend my colleagues, and in particular my friend from Utah, Jim Matheson, in bringing this bill forward. I was very supportive in the committee markup.

Madam Speaker, I would like to take the opportunity to relate the same story that I did in committee, a true story, unfortunately. When I was growing up, my parents owned what you might refer to as a mom-and-pop motel, sort of like a Motel 6, except I think we had 25 units and we charged $8 a night for one person and $10 a night for two, but that was a family business.

For a number of years, Madam Speaker, we didn't have a home. My parents had an efficiency apartment in the office of the motel. Most of the time we would have vacancies, so my two brothers and I would spend the night in one of the motel rooms, and it would vary from night to night.

I was about, I guess, 13 years old, one weekend in unit 1. Unit number 1 was a unit with two double beds. It was a larger unit of our 25-unit motel, so we would always like to stay in unit number 1. On the weekend, a cold winter night, my brother was 14, I was 13, and his best friend was 14, and we stayed in unit number 1.

Well, the very next weekend, unit number 1 was rented, so we weren't able to stay there. I remember going to mass on Sunday morning. My dad was Methodist, my mom was a Catholic, and Mom took my two brothers and me to mass.

When we came back, unfortunately in the parking lot of that motel I saw what I had never seen before, a beige-brown hearse--in fact, two or three of them--in the parking lot of this motel.

Madam Speaker, what had happened is three soldiers that weekend stayed in unit No. 1; they were 18-19 years old. They had crossed the State line because you could drink beer in South Carolina when you were 18 years old, and you couldn't do it in Georgia, so we would get a lot of weekend business from the military. These young soldiers got asphyxiated that night with carbon monoxide poisoning. It was just such a devastating thing to my dad. It just about caused him to lose his mind, quite honestly, and his business, even though it wasn't his fault. It was a faulty heater that the way the wind was blowing that night, it blew the burnt fuel back into the room, and these three soldiers, young boys, God bless them, lost their lives that night.

So when Representative Matheson brought this bill before the Energy and Commerce Committee, as you know, Madam Speaker, as also a committee member, man, it brought all of that back. It was 55 years ago that that happened, and it was just like it was yesterday.

So I commend the gentleman, I absolutely do. I have some concerns about changing from a voluntary standard to a mandatory standard; but this is good work, this is good legislation, and for that reason I am going to support it.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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