Sometimes, disasters are a matter of timing

TS discusses a call from the Mary Ellen McCormack project in South Boston one night - three people in one family complaining of headaches. Turned out their entire building was full of carbon monoxide - but the alarms never went off because workers doing renovations to the building had left for the day without reconnecting the smoke and carbon-monoxide detectors they'd disconnected:

... This could have been a real catastrophe. A few hours later, everyone would have been asleep. The rising carbon monoxide levels would have gone unnoticed. Dozens of people would have lapsed into unconsciousness, and by the time anyone noticed a problem, everyone in the building might have been dead. ...