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SALT LAKE CITY -- A Salt Lake family can thank a friend for saving their lives. Their house was full of carbon monoxide, and if the friend had not left work and gone there this morning, it could have been a tragic ending.
The family was living in a basement apartment in the area of 1120 West and Illinois Avenue. They knew something was wrong when they all started to feel sick, but they thought it was food poisoning.
Family members had no idea they were suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning, and neither did their friend, Carlos Cubas.
"I thought, at first, they were exaggerating," Cubas said. He was at work when he got a call from his friend's wife saying her entire family was sick. He decided to leave work and go to their house a few blocks away, and when he got there it was apparent something was wrong.
"She was still kind of conscious, but she didn't know what she was doing. She opened the door, but all the family was lying down in the bathroom. I didn't know what was happening. I said, ‘What's wrong?'" Cubas said.
He immediately called 911, and the dispatcher started telling him what to do. "Open the door, open the window; maybe something is happening, you don't know," he said.
Cubas moved the kids from the bathroom to the living room while their mom and dad faded in and out of consciousness. "He fainted, got conscious again, fainted," Cubas said.
The Pena family was rushed to the hospital. They spent a good part of the day getting treated in a hyperbaric chamber. Firefighters say Cubas is a hero.
"Anybody in the same situation they would do the same," Cubas said.
But he says it's Naomi Pena who's the hero. "She was the one who woke up and called me. Because if she didn't wake up or ask for help, maybe they'd be lying there and no one would know what happened," Cubas said.
Fire investigators found the source of the carbon monoxide was a furnace inside the home. The family has been released from the hospital; the mom and dad will need additional treatments in the hyperbaric chamber.
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Story compiled with contributions from Courtney Orton and Andrew Adams.
