This travel trailer exploded when the fridge pilot ignited leaking propane.
Image Credit: Vernon Fire Department
July 06, 2013 - 3:19 PM
"I TOLD THEM TO BUY A LOTTERY TICKET."
It’s an overused expression, but in this case it works. A young couple sitting in their car in the parking lot at Sparkling Hills Resort near Predator Ridge are lucky to be alive.
They were parked next to a travel trailer that exploded Saturday morning just before 8 o’clock.
The propane blast completed destroyed the trailer sending debris for 100 to 150 feet.
The couple heard an alarm going off and the man rolled his window down so he could hear it. That’s when the trailer exploded. They weren’t hurt in the blast.
“I told them to buy a lottery ticket,” says Vernon Fire Captain Reinhard Mann. “The only side the explosion didn’t go was the side they were parked on.”
The explosion and fire also set the trees and brush ablaze. Fire crews quickly put it out before it spread.
The owners, a couple from Fort McMurray vacationing in the area, were staying at the hotel. They were contacting their insurance company as they gathered up what possessions that weren’t destroyed by the blast.
Mann figures it was a propane leak that was ignited by the pilot in the fridge. The alarm the witness in the parked car heard had to have been the gas detector.
“It definitely flashed and had a burn pattern on the inside. It put itself out just from the explosion.”
To contact the reporter for this story email halexander@infotelnews.ca or call (250) 491-0331.
News from © iNFOnews, 2013