Inside the battle to regulate one of the country’s deadliest consumer products

The only time I fire that bad boy up is when the power goes out...then it is outside in the yard with extension cords coming through the doggie door to power the fridge and a lamp or two or possibly an electric heater if it is cold.

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."Three days after Hurricane Ida slammed ashore on Aug. 29, leveling homes and knocking out power along the Louisiana coast, Craig Curley Sr. maneuvered through a packed crowd at Home Depot to reach the aisle with portable generators.

Curley, 50, snagged one of the last units in stock, a 6,250-watt Briggs & Stratton, and drove it to the home of his ex-wife, Demetrice Johnson, in Jefferson Parish.

He tried one last time to convince Johnson, 54, to take their children to stay with relatives in Houston as officials warned it might take weeks to restore power across the region. But she was adamant: With a generator to power her appliances, she felt safe staying.

That evening, Curley helped set up the machine in Johnson’s tiny backyard. He fired up the engine and hung around long enough to make sure the air conditioner was blowing cold. He showed his teenage son how to restart it, then headed home.

“If I’d known what I know now,” Curley said, “I never would have bought that damn thing.”

By the next morning, his ex-wife and their children, 17-year-old Craig Curley Jr. and 23-year-old Dasjonay Curley, were dead, poisoned by carbon monoxide that, according to fire officials, probably flowed from the generator’s exhaust and into the home through the back door."...

Interesting report. I have a generator. It has an A and B side that needs to be balance, ie, you can’t run 1400 watts off one side and 100 watts off the other. You need to ground it. It has a duty cycle, you can’t run it 24/7, You have to periodically shut it down. The Generator is noisy as a jet taking off, I am sure running 24/7 will upset neighbors. I set it up and balance run time with freezer frozen food maintenance times. The refrigerator says foods stay safe four hours with out fridge running. I got a system that runs This whole thing isn’t a switch on and forget. I have thought about getting a whole house generator. If you get a generator you need to plan to buy before a storm hits. You need grounding rod, wire to ground it, and I recommend getting something like the snorkel system so you can run off propane, natural gas or gasoline. Propane tanks are easier to store than gasoline and propane doesn’t deteriorate like gas. I hook mine up to a natural gas line I set up on the patio for my grill.