HUNTINGTON STATION, N.Y. — A faulty water heater flue pipe caused a carbon-monoxide leak that killed a New York restaurant manager and sent more than two dozen people to hospitals, a fire official said Sunday.
Huntington Chief Fire Marshal Terence McNally said the fumes were circulated in the basement by the ventilation systems at the Legal Sea Foods restaurant at the Walt Whitman Shops on Long Island.
Restaurant manager Steven Nelson was found unresponsive in the basement Saturday night and pronounced dead at a hospital.
Roger Berkowitz, president and CEO of Legal Sea Foods, said Nelson, 55, of Copiague, had worked for the restaurant for three years and had two sons.
The building was not required to have carbon-monoxide detectors, and there were none, McNally said. Berkowitz said the leak was “a wake-up call for commercial businesses.”
The Associated Press
