Heating season is starting — expect carbon monoxide calls and early structure fires

The hazard this week is the one that comes every year with the first sustained cold: heating equipment going back into service. Furnaces that sat idle since spring, space heaters pulled from closets, chimneys that were never swept. The failures cluster in the first cold snap, before anyone has had a system checked.

Carbon monoxide is the first pattern. Dispatch, watch for the calls that don't present as CO — headache, nausea, everyone in the house feeling off, multiple patients with the same vague symptoms in one address. Treat a cluster like that as a possible CO exposure until a meter says otherwise, and get that information to responding crews early so they go in metered. Medics, the patient who improves in your rig and then declines back at the residence is telling you the source is still in the building.

Structure fires follow the same curve. Space heaters too close to combustibles, overloaded outlets, fireplaces run with a dirty flue. Early-season fires often start in occupied sleeping spaces at night, which changes your search priorities on arrival.

For your own shift: cold weather is hard on apparatus and on people. Water supply freezes, gauges read wrong, and crews working a long incident lose dexterity and judgment before they notice. Rehab matters more in the cold than most people act like it does.

None of this is a forecast. For actual temperatures, wind chill and any winter weather watches or warnings in your response area, check your local National Weather Service office or your agency's briefing — conditions differ block to block in the cold, and the overnight low is what drives call volume.

The practical takeaway: expect CO and heating-fire volume to climb as temperatures drop, flag CO patterns at dispatch, and go in metered.