NFPA Journal - May/June 2019 - 72

Perspectives
NFPACONFERENCE&EXPO
SANANTONIO2019

C A R B O N M O N OX I D E H A Z A R D S

ROOM 225

SINCE HER PARENTS WERE FOUND DEAD IN A
NORTH CAROLINA HOTEL ROOM, KRIS HAUSCHILDT
HAS WORKED TO EXPOSE THE HIDDEN DANGERS
OF CARBON MONOXIDE
Interview conducted and edited by Jesse Roman
n the six years since the sudden

Kris Hauschildt with
a portrait of her
parents, Daryl and
Shirley Jenkins, who
died of carbon
monoxide poisoning
in a North Carolina
hotel room in 2013.

deaths of her parents, Kris
Hauschildt has had a painful stream
of "what ifs" playing over and over
in her mind. What if hotels were
required to have carbon monoxide (CO) detection?
What if her parents had known to carry a portable
CO detector? What if authorities had acted faster
to find the problem?
"It's been an awful thing to live through," she
told NFPA Journal in a recent interview. "Coming
to terms with it, and everything I've found out
since, has been really overwhelming."
On April 14, 2013, Hauschildt's parents, Daryl
and Shirley Jenkins of Longview, Washington,
checked into room 225 at the Best Western
hotel in Boone, North Carolina. On the morning of April 16, Daryl, 73, and Shirley, 72-high
school sweethearts married 53 years-were found

72 | NFPA JOURNAL * M A Y / J U N E 2 0 1 9

unconscious inside their hotel room. Both were
later pronounced dead.
Investigators found no signs of foul play or
obvious hazards. Nor did they test the room for
carbon monoxide or other possible environmental
culprits. Over the next two days, a medical examiner performed
autopsies and
took blood
CONFERENCE
SESSION
samples, but
it would be
Case Studies in
more than 50
Hotel Carbon
days before
Monoxide Poisonings:
the tests were
How Safe Is Your
analyzed and
Hotel Room?
Tuesday, June 18,
carbon monox3:45-4:45 p.m.
ide poisoning
Kris Hauschildt,
was identified
Jenkins Foundation
as the cause of
their deaths. In
the meantime, room 225 was reopened-and the
unthinkable happened again.
On June 7, 2013, Jeannie Williams and her
11-year-old son Jeffrey checked into room 225 for
an overnight pit stop before picking up Jeffrey's
older sister the following morning from a youth
camp. Early the next afternoon, a housekeeper
found Jeffrey dead on the bed. Jeannie was on
the bathroom floor, near death. She ultimately
survived, but suffered permanent brain injury and
other physical injuries.
This time investigators were more thorough.
Directly below room 225, hidden by a drop ceiling,
they discovered a pipe designed to carry exhaust
from a pool heater safely to the outside. The pipe
was severely corroded, and gaping holes allowed
clouds of carbon monoxide to waft directly into
the room above. High levels of CO can kill by
reducing a person's ability to absorb oxygen, eventually leading to a loss of consciousness and
death, similar to suffocation. After discovering the
corroded pipe, investigators let the pool heater
run for about a half hour, then tested CO levels in
room 225. The levels were high enough to kill a
person if exposed long enough.
In the years since, Hauschildt has tried to
come to grips with her loss by learning more
about the CO hazard in hotels in order to prevent
others from dying. When she found that no
federal agency tracks these specific incidents,
she decided to do it herself. She scoured Internet
news archives and research studies back to the
1960s to find at least a rough estimate of how
often CO-related hotel incidents happen, and

NFPA Journal - May/June 2019

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