Family members are calling it a Passover miracle.
Around 4:30 a.m. Saturday, a carbon monoxide alarm jarred awake 24 people, seven children among them, who are spending Passover weekend at 1066 North Ave. Four generations of extended family had gone to bed about three hours earlier, after the Seder.
Everyone was conscious when EMTs arrived, but 14 people were taken to hospitals for blood oxygen-level checks, said Linda Eagle, who is among those staying here, at her brother Myron Eagle’s home.
“As soon as we get the good news that everyone is OK, which we really expect because no one was unconscious,” Linda Eagle said, “we are going to be happy.”
The night before, there’d been matzo ball soup and matzah with traditional charoset and herbs, then a meal that included apricot chicken, mashed sweet potatoes and a family specialty, broccoli kugal. Everyone sang and frolicked and there were presents for the children.
“We read through a book that tells the story of the Jewish passage to freedom, and all the children participate in it,” with everyone around the table reading a paragraph at a time, Linda Eagle said, as she sat at a long table in the red-brick home with extended family.
The plan was that some people would sleep in and others would go to synagogue. There’d be an informal breakfast. They’d gather with Linda Eagle’s 93-year-old mother, whom they know as “Grandma Millie.”
Then the alarm rang.
Linda Eagle said firefighters, the police and other responders were on scene “almost instantly.”
“The EMTs — absolutely wonderful,” she said. “Fire department — absolutely spectacular.”
Anyone found with an increased carbon monoxide level went to the hospital, she said.
A nephew staying at the home is an EMT and administered oxygen to one of his cousins, who had an elevated level, Linda Eagle said. There are also two doctors and a nurse among those spending Passover at the house.
Linda Eagle said her mother has her own oxygen tank, which meant she was fine and showed no elevated reading.
Some family were at synagogue Saturday saying a special prayer, one reserved for when life has been spared from something terrible, she said.
On Saturday night, Linda Eagle said, because the cause of the carbon monoxide appeared to be an oven in the home, which Consolidated Edison personnel are to fix and inspect, matzo ball soup will be heated in a crock pot. The chicken fricassee, a family favorite, goes into the freezer for another day.
But that doesn’t matter much now.
“As long as everybody is OK,” Linda Eagle said,” we really don’t care what we eat.”
She said that Saturday night “we’re going to say an extra thank you.”
“We’re just so grateful,” she said.
All 14 members were released from the hospitals and doing OK, Linda Eagle said.
“It was a Pesach miracle,” said Tamar Eagle, Linda’s niece, using the Hebrew word for Passover.
Or as Linda Eagle said by email later, another name for Passover’s first night is Lail Shimoreem.
“It means the night we are watched over,” she said. “Someone was watching over us – we are all safe.”
Source: The Journal News/ Lohud
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