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SALT LAKE CITY — Heather Adair still gets emotional when she thinks back on Dec. 2, 2011.
"We knew them very well in the community," said Adair.
She's talking about neighbors Dave and April Weeks.
"Dave was my son's youth leader, and April was my kids' song leader at church," she said.
It was just one day after a huge wind storm tore through Bountiful and left much of Davis County without power. Adair was up for her routine morning walk.
"When I came up on the Weeks' house, the door was open," she said.
Adair said she immediately knew something was wrong.
"They were both laying on the ground," she said. "Dave was in between the bedroom and the front door, and April was a few feet from the front door."
She knew the couple had a portable generator to heat their home and suspected carbon monoxide poisoning. Somehow, she managed to pull both outside, then realizing she didn't have her phone, took off running to the home of Tiffany Lee, a nurse.
"I obviously knew this was more than I could take care of," Lee said.
Lee called 911 and a few minutes later help arrived.
"Of everyone in our neighborhood, Dave Weeks is the last one you would imagine this happening to," Adair said.
It's called the silent killer for a reason.
"The house didn't smell like anything," Adair said. "There wasn't an odor. There wasn't any type of anything alarming about the house."
Dave and April Weeks got lucky that day.
"We can't explain why we were spared and others aren't, " Dave Weeks said.
Related:
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A Bountiful couple says their chance, improbable rescue from a near-fatal carbon monoxide poisoning in their home is due to sheer will power with a big assist from divine intervention.He and his wife are in Nebraska now on a work assignment.
"We feel like we're 100 percent recovered," Dave Weeks said. "We do not feel like there is any lasting effect."
"We feel like that is a miracle," added April Weeks.
The problem did turn out to be their generator, though set up correctly, the storm provided just the right conditions for disaster.
"There was a curve of the air as it would come over the roof," Dave Weeks said. "It was picking up that carbon monoxide and lifting it up into the eaves of the house."
The experience has changed all their lives.
"We do believe that we are here because we're supposed to be here," Dave Weeks said.
"I went out and bought a carbon monoxide meter," Lee said.
Heather still get's emotional when she thinks back on that day, but she's grateful it ended the way it did.
"Carbon monoxide is pretty scary and pretty real," she said.
