Post: #1

Quote:A New Jersey woman who worked multiple jobs to support herself died Monday while snatching a few minutes of sleep in her car.

Maria Fernandes, 32, succumbed to a deadly combination of carbon monoxide and fumes from an overturned gas container that she kept in her 2001 Kia Sportage, cops say.

The woman worked shifts at Dunkin' Donuts shops in Harrison, Newark and Linden.

“She used to work like three shifts every day,” Parth Patel, who worked with Fernandes at Newark Penn Station, told NJ.com. “Sometimes she wouldn’t sleep for five days.”

One of her managers, Sophia Paches, said that Fernandes had been an excellent employee during her four years at the Linden store. The woman would sometimes finish an overnight shift at 6 a.m., sleep in her car for a few hours, and then move on to her next shift.

Despite the grueling schedule, Monday was the first time Fernandes missed a day of work.

The woman had pulled into a Wawa parking lot on Route 1 & 9 in Elizabeth at about 8:30 a.m. She apparently left the car running, cops said. She was found dead about eight hours later.

A Hazmat team had to monitor the fumes for four hours before it became safe enough for rescuers to enter the Kia.

"This sounds like someone who tried desperately to work and make ends meet, and met with a tragic accident," Elizabeth police Lt. Daniel Saulnier said.

Former boyfriend Richard Culhane said Fernandes was born in Massachusetts, but returned to her parents’ native Portugal when she was about 9 years old. She moved back to the U.S. some 14 years ago, taking classes at a Harrison school and bunking with a family friend.

"I told (her) she could get a better job, but she said she didn't want to work in an office," Culhane said.

Friends and co-workers remembered Fernandes as a “sweet” and “hardworking” person who was always ready to lend a hand to people and animals in need.

One coworker remembered how Fernandes would save food scaps to feed to the birds after work.

She also idolized Michael Jackson, singing his songs and attempting his dance moves during her shifts. She told friends she planned to take the entire day off Aug. 29 to celebrate the pop star’s birthday.

An exact cause of death has not yet been released.

“She was just a nice human being,” Patel said. “She was everywhere, she used to do everything. And the good thing was, she never called out.”

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national...-1.1920260

Post: #2

1 word: equality.

Tragedy though.

Post: #3

This story has been making the rounds on facebook. Not sure the point of the viral postings though. Its sad but it sounds like she turned down better work for some reason. I wonder why she kept a container of gas with her all the time?

Post: #4

More an accident and a sign of the times, that people have to work 4 jobs to survive.

Post: #5

Quote:A Hazmat team had to monitor the fumes for four hours before it became safe enough for rescuers to enter the Kia.

Couldn't just walk up and open the fucking doors and air the car out? What is this, the fucking Ebola virus?

Since when do you need a full Hazmat team set up shop for four hours to deal with CO and gas fumes in a car?

Your tax dollars at work.

Post: #6

(08-30-2014 06:30 PM)scorpion Wrote:  

Quote:A Hazmat team had to monitor the fumes for four hours before it became safe enough for rescuers to enter the Kia.

Couldn't just walk up and open the fucking doors and air the car out? What is this, the fucking Ebola virus?

Since when do you need a full Hazmat team set up shop for four hours to deal with CO and gas fumes in a car?

Your tax dollars at work.

http://www.wired.com/2009/03/japanese-deterg/
https://dps.mn.gov/divisions/sfm/program...0MNJAC.pdf

Chemical suicides are crazy shit. People mix shit and leave it in their cars to kill themselves, and not everyone is nice enough to leave a note telling you what they used and that it's a hazmat situation in there.

So, you assume the worst when you find a body in a car with no sign of trauma. If you don't know what the fuck is in the car, opening the door to air it out could kill you and everybody else around.

Post: #7

(08-30-2014 07:00 PM)Deuce Anna Half Wrote:  

(08-30-2014 06:30 PM)scorpion Wrote:  

Quote:A Hazmat team had to monitor the fumes for four hours before it became safe enough for rescuers to enter the Kia.

Couldn't just walk up and open the fucking doors and air the car out? What is this, the fucking Ebola virus?

Since when do you need a full Hazmat team set up shop for four hours to deal with CO and gas fumes in a car?

Your tax dollars at work.

http://www.wired.com/2009/03/japanese-deterg/
https://dps.mn.gov/divisions/sfm/program...0MNJAC.pdf

Chemical suicides are crazy shit. People mix shit and leave it in their cars to kill themselves, and not everyone is nice enough to leave a note telling you what they used and that it's a hazmat situation in there.

So, you assume the worst when you find a body in a car with no sign of trauma. If you don't know what the fuck is in the car, opening the door to air it out could kill you and everybody else around.

Fair enough, I suppose. Seems kind of unnecessary if the woman is sitting there dead with the car running, though. But if you've got a Hazmat team sitting around, why not, right? They must get bored.

Post: #8

You'll never see a dime working this hard.

Post: #9

How fucked up does ones financial situation have to be that they work three jobs? Newark isn't expensive.

(08-30-2014 07:23 PM)jariel Wrote:  You'll never see a dime working this hard.

True. She's look average but she still could've got a simp to live with/pay some of her bills if she just strung him along. Don't underestimate the thirst.

Post: #10

How do they know she was really dead? She couldve been revived if they just took her out?

Post: #11

(08-30-2014 08:18 PM)Sebastian Wrote:  How do they know she was really dead? She couldve been revived if they just took her out?

Carbon monoxide poisoning is no joke man. It will replace all the oxygen in your blood and brain. It's a gentle kind of asphyxiation.

Post: #12

WRAB (would resurrect and bang).

Post: #13

(08-30-2014 08:16 PM)Goldin Boy Wrote:  True. She's look average but she still could've got a simp to live with/pay some of her bills if she just strung him along. Don't underestimate the thirst.

Some states haven't got a simp to string a penny together. If she was in Miami, she would be sitting pretty on some joker's dollars. RIP to her though..tragic

Post: #14

Can you get carbon monoxide poisioning from just the tipped over gas alone? I thought it was from the exhaust fumes, which are pointed away from the car. And she wasn't in an enclosed garage either.

Post: #15

A person afflicted with CO poising isn't just cured automatically by being places in a oxygen rich environment. Reason being is that CO binding force is much stronger than o2, hence why it happens in the first place. So it takes time for the CO to be replaced by o2.

It may look painless if there is an extreme amount of Co(measured in ppm) as you could die in a few minutes. If you take half the amount it would take to kill a man in 2 min you would see quite a painful death. High blood pressure, heart arrhythmia, convulsions, and other abnormalities

It's like being place in a high altitude area all of a sudden. You actually don't notice you are breathing hard or fatigued until you raise your physical activity or when you're there for a couple hours. You've already got altitude sickness before you knew it. Same thing for CO poisoning as once symptoms show you have already been poisoned. So now there is mental confusion that has already set in and the fact that you probably think that you're getting a sick it. The first thing a person does it sit down and get some rest.

Post: #16

(08-30-2014 10:41 PM)kbell Wrote:  Can you get carbon monoxide poisioning from just the tipped over gas alone? I thought it was from the exhaust fumes, which are pointed away from the car. And she wasn't in an enclosed garage either.

Unburned fuel gives of CO and other gases. If she also was using an old car (most likely since she worked 3 jobs) then some parts could of faulty. That could lead to additional unburned fuel which could of leaked into the car.

Post: #17

Gas containers or not, this happens quite often. It's a universally bad idea to sleep with the engine on. But I can't say this case has anything to do with women in general.

Post: #18

(08-30-2014 10:41 PM)kbell Wrote:  Can you get carbon monoxide poisioning from just the tipped over gas alone? I thought it was from the exhaust fumes, which are pointed away from the car. And she wasn't in an enclosed garage either.

Gas fumes are toxic, but not because of CO. I doubt the gas had much to do with it, seeing how if her car was full of gas fumes she would never have fallen asleep because breathing them in makes you feel like shit, and if her car wasn't moving why would the gas have spilled spontaneously while she was sleeping?

As far as exhaust, she could've had an exhaust leak anywhere under the car and had fumes leak in that way. Old exhaust systems can leak like crazy, and deaths like this aren't super rare. Most of the time I hear about people sleeping in covered pickup beds with the engine running, not in cars, though.

I actually had a cop come check on me just a few days ago when I was running my diesel for ~15 minutes to de-fog the inside. Someone called the campus police to check and see if I was still alive, according to the cop. Because I have my engine's crankcase blowby vented to my front left wheelwell it looks like a shitload of exhaust coming out right under the cab when I'm idling in the cold. I plan on sleeping in the cab with the truck idling during winter trips but that's what CO detectors and good door seals are for. I'll probably replace my exhaust stack to get the exhaust above the cab in the long term to minimize the risk.

Post: #19

(08-30-2014 08:21 PM)TravelerKai Wrote:  

(08-30-2014 08:18 PM)Sebastian Wrote:  How do they know she was really dead? She couldve been revived if they just took her out?

Carbon monoxide poisoning is no joke man. It will replace all the oxygen in your blood and brain. It's a gentle kind of asphyxiation.

More the reason to NOT WAIT for 4 fucking hours to let her out. Carbon monoxide poisoning leaves the body rosy, so theres little to tell her actual condition until checked. Seeing that shes likely to have fallen sleep with the car running for warmth and not suicide, those minutes might have made a difference.

But hey, it seems more important to justify the need for a hazmat team than to save the life of expendable workers.

Post: #20

This is the reality of a lot of people nowadays. Multiple part-time jobs, with no benefits. The cut the shifts up and constantly change them. From the -s at the end of her name, the location and the job, she was probably of Brazilian origin. Ironbound in Newark is full of Brazilians. I dated a couple of girls like her, Dunkin' Donuts Brazilians. They were always complaining about shift changes and irregular numbers of hours.

Post: #21

(08-31-2014 01:23 AM)germanico Wrote:  

(08-30-2014 08:21 PM)TravelerKai Wrote:  

(08-30-2014 08:18 PM)Sebastian Wrote:  How do they know she was really dead? She couldve been revived if they just took her out?

Carbon monoxide poisoning is no joke man. It will replace all the oxygen in your blood and brain. It's a gentle kind of asphyxiation.

More the reason to NOT WAIT for 4 fucking hours to let her out. Carbon monoxide poisoning leaves the body rosy, so theres little to tell her actual condition until checked. Seeing that shes likely to have fallen sleep with the car running for warmth and not suicide, those minutes might have made a difference.

But hey, it seems more important to justify the need for a hazmat team than to save the life of expendable workers.

Come on man, ease up. I understand where you're coming from, but you have to recognize that emergency responders have all kinds of rules to abide by, and if they don't, they will lose their jobs. When I was going through EMT there was a big story about some emergency responders who didn't save a guy who fell into like 2 feet of water and drowned. Why? Because their regulations prohibited them from entering the water without appropriate water training. They had to wait for a boat to come and he died before it got there.

Could they have safely saved the guy? Absolutely. And then they would've lost their jobs and probably had a hard time finding new ones, seeing how they got fired for violating the rules. Then their families are in trouble with lost income, etc. Fewer first responders means fewer people to save lives in general, so some people who would've been saved would then die, or sustain much worse lasting injuries than otherwise.

There's all kinds of shit attached to being a first responder. If you're just Mr. Good Samaritan you can do a lot of things that would get a paramedic or firefighter shitcanned.

Besides, as someone else said they have no clear idea what they're dealing with in that situation. Maybe there were signs that something was wrong, that the scene wasn't safe. You weren't there, how do you know? First responders aren't idiots. One of the first steps in responding to an incident is assessing scene safety. If it isn't safe, you don't move in.

Like it or not, for first responders personal safety has to come first. If your team gets killed because you ignored the safety rules to try to save one person, now how many other people are going to buy it because you're not around to save them? That's just one of the considerations involved. Not everybody can be saved.

Post: #22

Read the article, fellas. The title is typical media sensationalism.

Her "multiple jobs" were working shifts at different locations of the same chain. Sure, the broad put in a lot of hours, but she only had one "job".

Post: #23

7/10. Would have banged.

Post: #24

Sounds like she needed a rich boyfriend. I'll give her some credit for working for a living. It's that old world mentality.

Post: #25

If there is one thing I CAN NOT STAND is a woman whose only financial plan is to meet a man to take care of her. Until that happens they will leech off of hard working tax paying men (primarily)


This story is tragic because it appears this woman may have been the opposite of the things I'm beginning to loathe with every fiber of my being.