Heating season starts this week — expect the calls that come with it

Mid-October is the turn. The nights are now cold enough that heating systems left idle since spring come back on across most of the region this week. That single change drives the seasonal pattern every house knows: more carbon monoxide activations, more chimney and flue fires, and more appliance faults on the first hard run after months off.

Carbon monoxide is the one to watch. A furnace, boiler or space heater that sat unused all summer can have a cracked exchanger, a blocked flue or a bird's nest in the vent. The alarm activations climb as soon as people close the windows and run the heat overnight. Treat every activation as real until metered. The early symptoms people phone in with — headache, nausea, feeling unwell indoors, a whole household affected at once — read as flu this time of year, and dispatch and EMS both get them framed that way. Ask whether more than one person feels it and whether it eases outdoors.

Mornings are the other change. Clear, cold nights over damp ground produce dense radiation fog around dawn, patchy and slow to lift in low-lying areas and river valleys. That lands on commute-time collisions and on anyone working a roadway scene in half-light. Daylight is shortening fast now; scenes that ran in daylight a month ago will be worked in the dark. Pull lighting forward in your size-up.

First frost brings its own run of calls: slips and falls on untreated steps and walkways, and cold-exposure cases among people without reliable heat. None of this is new to you. The point is the timing — the switch happens this week, and the call volume follows it within days. Check your CO meters are calibrated and carried, and brief oncoming crews that heating season is live.