Family tragedy inspires safety quest

11/29/2006 © Miami Herald

Standing in front of a lectern in a Spartan government conference room, Maria Marquez is a picture of quiet determination: her voice steady and calm as she tells a panel of building industry experts about the family she lost, in its entirety, to a silent and untraceable poison.

After the meeting, she makes it past the bustling lobby, through the swinging glass doors and onto the hot Flagler sidewalk before she allows herself to cry.

This past summer, three generations of Marquez's family died after a running vehicle was left inside a closed garage -- sending waves of deadly carbon monoxide through their West Miami-Dade home. Marquez's mother, only sister, brother-in-law and two young nephews were killed.

Marquez believes a simple detector, similar to a smoke alarm, could have saved them.

''That's all I can think about. That's all I can focus on,'' said Marquez, 28, a single mother of a 7-year-old girl.

In the weeks since her family's death, Marquez has made it her mission to make carbon monoxide detectors mandatory in Florida , appealing to state and local officials -- and anyone else who will listen.

''I want people to get mad. Not because this happened to my family. But because it could happen to them,'' she said. ``And I just want something to be done about it.''

Her one-woman campaign has been simple -- a flurry of letters and phone calls to bureaucrats and government agencies -- but has already gained traction.

She has found allies in the Miami-Dade County Building Department, including Harold Schoendorf, 80, the mechanical division chief who stood by her side as she asked a county board to adopt her cause.

Joe Martinez, the County Commission chairman, is proposing an end-run around a state rule requiring all counties to adhere to the Florida Building Code -- which does not make carbon monoxide detectors mandatory.

Even with these triumphs, however small, Marquez admits she's frustrated with the pace of government and baffled by its labyrinthine processes.

''At first, it made me crazy. Who do you call? What do you do?'' said Marquez, a conflict specialist at Greenberg Traurig law firm. ``I work in a law firm, and even I couldn't figure out what needed to be done.''

She has spent the better part of three months trying to figure out that riddle.

EERIE FEELING

On Aug. 27, a Sunday, she arrived at her sister's home just south of Tamiami Trail.

Marquez hadn't heard from her sister or mother in two days, an unusually long time for her close-knit family. Marquez, who lived a few minutes away in a Fontainebleau apartment, decided to go by the house to check in.

When she pulled up to the home in Sausalito Bay and saw her mother's car in the driveway, she grew worried.

When no one answered her knock at the front door, she began to panic.

On her cellphone, she called a friend who happened to be a locksmith.

''He told me how to lift the sliding glass door in the back,'' Marquez said. 'I was able to open it, but I couldn't go inside. Something just told me, `Don't go inside.' ''

The house was too still, too quiet. Marquez called 911.

Police discovered Maytee Marquez, Maria's sister, inside her Ford Explorer, the garage door closed and the engine running. She was four days shy of her 33rd birthday.

Inside the home, found dead in their bedrooms, were: Marquez's mother, Maria Lucas, who had left Nicaragua with her two daughters to find a better life in the states and later worked in Central America as a Catholic missionary; and Marquez's brother-in-law, Robert Perez, and his two sons, ages 9 and 13.

CAUSE WAS POISONING

Police have attributed the deaths to carbon monoxide poisoning. A final report is pending but police think Maytee Marquez committed suicide -- and the deaths of her relatives were accidental, said Detective Mary Walters, a Miami-Dade police spokeswoman.

She said a carbon monoxide detector would likely have alerted the rest of the family, saving their lives and possibly that of Maytee Marquez.

The gas, lighter than air, may have spread into the home via an air handler installed in the garage, or even seeped through walls or under the doorway, Schoendorf said.

Carbon monoxide poisoning is the most common type of accidental poisoning nationwide and contributes to 40,000 emergency-room visits a year. The gas, produced by combustion in vehicle engines, portable generators and appliances that use natural gas, accidentally kills about 500 people a year, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The most common symptoms are headache, dizziness, vomiting and confusion -- although people who are sleeping can die from carbon monoxide before experiencing symptoms.

Carbon monoxide detectors cost between $20 and $60 at hardware or home stores.

Florida 's building code, which became the statewide standard in 2002, does not require the devices, although state health officials encourage their use, especially after hurricanes, when gas-powered generators are in use.

''There is always this reluctance to add one more regulation,'' said Charles Danger, head of the Miami-Dade Building Department and an advocate of making the devices mandatory. ``It's baloney.''

Danger and Schoendorf, the department's mechanical division chief, have pledged to help Marquez.

''I feel remiss that we can't protect people in the future,'' said Schoendorf, who outfitted his Coral Gables condo with a detector. He was by Marquez's side as she asked the county's Board of Rules and Appeals, made up mostly of industry leaders and experts, to use their clout to appeal to the state Building Commission. The board voted unanimously to write a letter to the state.

CHANGE IS PROPOSED

The county's building code and compliance office is pushing for a change to the Florida rules, and has drafted a proposed change that would require detectors in bedrooms. The Florida Building Commission begins hearings on proposed changes in March.

Meanwhile, Martinez has proposed a County Commission resolution asking state lawmakers to let counties adopt their own requirements for the detectors.

The proposal, which cites the deaths of Marquez's family, goes before the Intergovernmental Recreation & Cultural Affairs Committee in December.

''At first, I didn't want to go out there and talk about my family. Nothing I could do could bring them back,'' Marquez said. ``But then I realized that I couldn't just wait and watch this happen to someone else. That changed everything.''

Mandatory rules are slow to catch on

11/29/2006 © Miami Herald

Spurred by tragedy, a growing number of cities and states -- including Chicago , New York City and Massachusetts -- are making carbon monoxide detectors mandatory.

But in Miami-Dade County , attempts to adopt a mandatory rule for detectors have failed twice in previous years.

After five people died in a West Kendall home in 1999 -- from a vehicle left running in a closed garage -- Charles Danger, head of the county Building Department, proposed changing the South Florida building code to include a mandate for detectors.

But a now-defunct building code panel, which consisted mostly of building industry experts appointed by the County Commission , unanimously rejected that proposal.

A similar appeal to include the requirement in the 2001 Florida Building Code also died in committee and never went to a vote before the full Florida Building Commission.

''It's not that there was opposition to the concept,'' said Richard Brody, a Jacksonville-based builder who represents the residential construction committee and is the longest sitting appointee on the the Florida Building Commission. ``But there were concerns about the reliability of the technology.''

The county committee that reviewed the issue raised similar concerns, basing its ''no'' vote largely on findings presented by the county's code compliance office.

There were problems elsewhere. An avalanche of false alarms annoyed homeowners and taxed emergency responders after Chicago -- the first major city to require detectors -- enacted its law in 1994 following the death of a family of 10 because of a faulty boiler.

Those early problems have abated, however, said Pete Scales, spokesman for the Chicago Department of Buildings.

''That was mostly due to people not installing them properly,'' Scales said.

The requirement has made the city safer, according to the American Journal of Emergency Medicine, which compared cities that require the devices with those that don't. In Chicago , 0.4 percent of people exposed to carbon monoxide died; in Los Angeles , where the devices are not mandatory, 15 percent of exposures were fatal.

Campaigns to mandate detectors have typically focused on cold-weather regions, where coal-burning stoves and other heating systems have proved deadly in enclosed spaces. But advocates say people in warmer climates should also be wary.

''We have people who are multitasking and forget to turn off cars, or have automatic ignition and leave them in the garage,'' said Debbie Hanson, a member of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association and chairwoman of the group's carbon monoxide and smoke detector committee.

Hurricane season poses another set of worries in Florida : gas-powered generators.

After Hurricane Wilma last year, two Miami-Dade families were hospitalized and a Deerfield Beach man died after carbon monoxide fumes from portable generators seeped into their homes.

''This is not just a cold-state problem anymore,'' Hanson said.