Lexington considers new requirement for homeowners, landlords after fatal gas leak
Six months after a man died due to a gas leak in a Cardinal Valley apartment building, the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council is looking to require carbon monoxide detectors in residential homes in Lexington.
The council’s social services and public safety committee approved an ordinance Tuesday mandating property owners install carbon monoxide detectors in all Lexington apartment units and houses with gas-burning appliances or attached garages. The full council will take up the proposal at a Tuesday, Feb. 17 work session.
Buildings powered only by electricity would be exempt from the requirement, and property owners would have 180 days after the ordinance’s final passage to install detectors.
In July, a late-night gas leak at Oxford Circle Apartments off Versailles Road killed one tenant and hospitalized 11 others. The city condemned the 32-unit complex until the owner, Oxford KDR LLC, made repairs to the building.
City regulations currently require all new-build apartments and houses to have detectors. That requirement has only been in place since 2011, however, meaning structures built before then, like the Cardinal Valley apartments built in 1965, are exempt.
If the council approves the expanded requirement, the Lexington Fire Department will enforce compliance at apartment buildings, as well as in hospitals, daycares and senior living facilities, which would also be subject to installing the detectors. The city’s code enforcement division would ensure compliance for single-family homes and duplexes.
Eleventh District Council member Jennifer Reynolds, who sponsored the ordinance, said the Cardinal Valley gas leak was devastating to her and the neighborhood. It was also preventable, Reynolds notes.
“A carbon monoxide detector could have saved a life and prevented the illness of many and the displacement of a lot of tenants,” Reynolds said Monday.
The apartment complex where the leak occurred remains condemned as of Jan. 13, according to city spokesperson Susan Straub.
According to Lexington Fire Marshal Jeff Johnson, there were 30 reported cases of carbon monoxide poisoning in the city last year.
The fire officials told the council the most effective places to put the detectors are near gas-burning appliances and in bedrooms.
