This is just awful.

A Fresno, CA, woman turned to her generator after she ran out of money to pay her heating and electricity bills. And, sadly, the decision cost her her life. The unidentified 46-year-old died yesterday after inhaling a lethal amount of carbon monoxide emissions that hospitalized five other people, including firefighters who tried to save the woman’s life. Mercury News elaborates:

[Fresno Fire Chief Ken] Shockley and Battalion Chief Charles Tobias repeated warnings not to use internal combustion engines inside homes. But the woman had no power to receive the warnings over the radio or television and no extra money for a newspaper subscription to read the warnings. So she resorted to the gasoline-powered engine that spread odorless, invisible fumes that also could have blown up the house.

The woman, like many people who die of carbon monoxide poisoning, almost certainly had no physical warning that she was in mortal danger until it was too late, Shockley said: "She probably never knew."

If there’s one thing you buy this weekend, readers, make it a carbon monoxide detector.