Propane tanks explode into the air
Sydney company’s tractor-trailer was carrying 1,000 tanks
DEBERT — Exploding propane tanks streaked into the air like missiles as a massive ball of flames rose above the trees after a tractor-trailer caught fire Sunday night in Debert.
“Pretty spectacular. It was above the tree line,” Debert Fire Chief Shane Slack said from the charred scene on Plains Road Monday morning.
“Propane tanks discharging off, going left and right into the woods,” he said. “You would get this rogue trailer of a small missile going off, left and right. And you could just see the trailers as the propane was burning off the cylinder as it was being projected.”
Slack said a call for assistance about a propane fire came in about 10:20 p.m. When firefighters arrived at the scene, the fire was already fully involved.
The tractor-trailer, belonging to Supreme Tank Inc. in Sydney, was carrying 1,000, 20-pound propane tanks. Slack said the fire started after the trailer's brakes overheated. The driver, who was accompanied by a trainee, stopped to check it out but the fire had already spread up into the trailer and was beyond control.
“He just jumped out the door, he came back to get a fire extinguisher and the first one (tank) went off,” Slack said. “He bypassed the cab and kept motoring up the road. He was trying to put some space between him and the truck.”
The fire was so intense that the truck's aluminum components became molten liquid and left the tractor and trailer burned almost beyond recognition and sitting on its frame on the heavily damaged pavement. The wire remains of tires could be seen metres away from where they exploded off the rig.
Some propane tanks landed as far as 45 metres into the woods where nearby trees and the ground were left blackened and charred.
“Once you get one failure, because they're massed in there so heavy with a thousand tanks, that fails another one and it's just a chain reaction down the line until the mass heat started rupturing tanks, blowing off safety valves and the fire carried on. Longer it went, the worse it got.”
Plains Road was expected to be closed until late Monday afternoon while the remains of the tractor-trailer and propane tanks were cleaned up.
Slack said the Debert fire crew came in from the west end of Plains Road while firefighters from the Onslow Belmont brigade set up on the east end. Both crews had to remain well back until the tanks had ceased exploding.
“It wasn't so much the intensity as these rogue cylinders coming at you,” Slack said.
Slack, who has been with the fire department for 32 years, including 23 as chief, said he has never witnessed a fire with the intensity of the blaze.
“We were probably sitting here about 20 minutes before we could get in,” he said.
And Slack said it was only the late hour and the dampness in the air that kept the blaze from spreading farther into the woods.
“If this had been say, 4 o'clock (Saturday) afternoon, yes, it would have been a different story.”
The fire occurred in an industrial area of the community where there are no homes nearby.
The fire was extinguished just before midnight but Slack said it was 1 a.m. before the tanks had been cooled down enough for firefighters to leave.