Ice storm remembered: Survivor of carbon monoxide tragedy raises the alarm

It was the incessant whining of her Bichon Frise — a four-legged, fluffy white sentinel — that saved the lives of Patricia Hancock and her son during last December’s devastating ice storm.

A generator left running in their garage, the door cracked for ventilation, was slowly poisoning her and her family. Its fumes seeped into the home and filled it with carbon monoxide.

“My son said he was kind of feeling woozy so he went to bed. It was just my husband and I — I don’t remember talking, I don’t really remember anything at that point other than: I feel light-headed, I’m going to go to bed. I got up and I went to bed,” Hancock told the Star in an interview. “That was the last thing I remember, and that was about midnight.”

By the time she came to, her husband, 52-year-old Randy Hancock, was dead. Her 72-year-old mother-in-law would also succumb to the toxic fumes. Hancock and her 17-year-old son barely made it out alive, and she credits the yapping of their 10-year-old dog, Ice, with alerting her to the danger.

“She was sitting in front of my husband’s body, whining, and she would not leave to come to me,” Hancock said.

The fallout from the storm — days in darkness, with no heat — sent thousands scrambling for ways to keep warm. The ice storm knocked out power for more than a million people across the GTA, including hydro at Hancock’s Newcastle home. Like many, she and her family went out to buy a generator.

Toronto EMS had approximately 110 calls for carbon monoxide poisoning in the two days the ice storm was at its height.

Normally, “we might get, in a month, maybe 50 calls, but we had 110 in two days during the ice storm last year,” said spokesperson Kim McKinnon. “People know not to start their car up and close the door of their garage. These things are the same.”

In a different case, an east-end family was rushed to hospital Christmas morning suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning. They had been burning charcoal indoors to keep warm.

Hancock thought she and her family were safe because they had cracked the garage door to allow fumes to escape, she says. It was Dec. 22, just days before Christmas, as the storm was dropping 20 to 33 mm of freezing rain that coated the GTA in ice and played havoc with power lines, leaving many thousands without electricity.

“We were sitting around the fireplace ... in the family room and we were talking about our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day plans, then we went upstairs,” said Hancock. “My mother-in-law wasn’t feeling too well, so she lay down on the spare bed.”

Her mother-in-law, Shirley Hancock, had health problems, so initially nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Then, as the carbon monoxide took hold, Patricia, her husband and her son began feeling the effects.

She woke up to the whining of her dog. At first, disoriented by the effects of the gas, she had difficulty assessing the situation. The carbon monoxide detector in their basement had a dead battery, she said.

When Ice the dog continued whining, and wouldn’t come when she called, Hancock began to realize something had gone terribly wrong.

“I had so much poison in me that I didn’t have the mental capacity to even know,” she said.

She staggered up and noticed vomit on the bed beside her but couldn’t recall getting sick.

“I was hitting my husband on the back saying, ‘You’ve got to get up, we’ve got to get your mom to the hospital,’” she said. She struggled downstairs to call 911, but it was too late for her husband and mother-in-law.

A law was brought into force Oct. 15, 2014, requiring homes to have carbon monoxide detectors installed.

Hancock and her son eventually recovered after a week of hyperbaric oxygen therapy. She’s now trying to raise awareness of the dangers of carbon monoxide and how to be properly prepared.

“Because I survived, I don’t want to see somebody else die because of this, where there is no reason for it to happen now. ... People will probably still do stupid things, but if I can save one person’s life, all has not been lost,” said Hancock.